G06 




University of California 



Suggestions 

to 

Teachers of English 

in the 

Secondary Schools 



by 

C. M. Gaytes; and C. B. 'Bradley 



SUGGESTIONS 



TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 



SECONDARY SCHOOLS 



C. M. GAYLEY, 
Professor of English Language and Literature, 



C. B. BRADLEY, 

Professor of Rhetoric 



(second edition; revised and enlarged) 



PRICE 25 CENTS 



BERKELEY 

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 

1906 



U i*. 16 



UNIVERSITY PRESS 

BERKELEY 

1906 



APR 25 1906 
1). ot 0. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Chapter I. — Sequence of Studies 9 

§ 1. General Statement: University Eequirements 9 

§ 2. Simple Narrative Poetry 13 

§ 3. Simple Prose 14 

§ 4. Ballads 14 

§ 5. Classical and Teutonic Mythology 14 

§ 6. Short Poems, chiefly narrative, but with subjective 

elements 15 

§ 7. Introduction to the Shakespearian Drama 16 

§ 8. Essays and Addresses (American Ideals) 16 

§ 9. Poems, English and American (Chivalry and Pa- 
triotism 17 

§ 10. The Historical Essay 17 

§ 11. The Novel 17 

§ 12. The Poetry of Milton 17 

§ 13. The Addisonian Essay 18 

§ 14. Orations and Arguments IS 

§ 15. The Essay, Literary or Ethical 18 

§ 16. An Outline of English Literature 18 

Chapter II. — Suggestions to Teachers 20 

§ 17. Topics and Periods 20 

§ 18. Oral Heading 22 



A. LANGUAGE. 

§ 19. Word-Study 23 

§§ 20 and 21. Grammar 24-27 

§ 22. Written Composition 27 

§ 23. Oral Composition 31 

§ 24. Khetoric 32 



B. LITEEATURE. 

§ 25. Introduction to Poetry: Simple Ballads, Lays and 

Popular Songs (Poetry of the People) 33 

§ 26. Introduction to Poetry: Mythology in Literature 35 

§ 27. The Poetry of Individual Art: Narrative, Descriptive, 

and Eeflective 39 

§ 28. Poetry; The Drama: Shakespeare's Plays in the 

Schools 46 

§ 29. Prose: The Essay 50 

§ 30. Prose: The Oration and Argument 50 

§ 31. Prose: The Novel 51 

Chapter III. — Supplementary Reading for Schools 54 

§ 32. List for Libraries, etc 54 

Chapter IV. — Advanced Study for Teachers 56 

§ 33. The Critical Study of Shakespeare 56 

§ 34. References on Six Shakespearian Tragedies 68 



PEEFATOEY NOTE. 

The first edition of this pamphlet was published in 1894, 
and is now out of print. The present edition attempts to 
bring- the discussion up to date. For the benefit of teachers 
desirous of communicating with the respective authors of 
these suggestions, it may be well to say that while the work 
as a whole is the result of careful collaboration, the articles 
on the sequence of studies (except section 5), on the teach- 
ing of language (except sections 18 and 23) and of prose 
literature (except sections 8 and 31 [2]) are primarily by 
Professor Bradley, the rest by Professor Gayley. For the 
paragraph on essays and addresses illustrative of ideals of 
American Citizenship the authors are indebted to Professor 
A. F. Lange. 



Berkeley, 1905. 






c^rv> 



S(^ 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 

IN THE 

SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Attention has for many years been directed to the la- 
mentable condition of English instruction in the secondary 
schools. It is discovered not only that English has been 
neglected for other subjects, but that English is, itself, 
especially difficult to teach. That English has been 
neglected is the fault of parents and the general public 
more than of teachers. In the majority of American homes 
little or no reading of the English classics obtains; and in- 
sistence upon the use of pure English in speaking and writ- 
ing is left generally to the schools. That English is difficult 
to teach follows from the ease with which both teacher and 
pupil may shirk the English lesson. The instructor has too 
frequently only a smattering of the subject; the pupil 
thinks that he knows all about it. Each is prone to con- 
temn what appears to be easy. 

But the community in general is awakening to the fact 
that the young do not speak, write, and read their mother- 
tongue correctly, and that they neither know nor appreciate 
English literature : and the Universities are convinced that 
better training in secondary Etaglish studies is demanded 
by the interests of higher education. Especially to be noted, 
moreover, is the emphasis laid by the English Conference 
of the National Council of Education (Report of Committee 
of Ten to the National Council, Bureau of Education, 
Washington, 1893) on the pivotal character of English in 
the school curriculum : "It is a fundamental idea in this re- 
port that the study of every other subject should contribute 
to the pupil's training in English; and that the pupil's 



8 English in Secondary Schools. 

capacity to write English should be made available, and be 
developed, in eveiy other requirement. * * * The Con- 
ference claim for English as much time as the Latin Con- 
ference claim for Latin in secondary schools ; and it is clear 
that they intend that the study shall be in all respects as 
serious and informing as the study of Latin. ' ' 

For years the University of California has made similar 
claims for the English course in High Schools. It is for the 
purpose of showing how such requirements may be satisfied 
that the following suggestions for teachers have been pre- 
pared ; not, however, with any thought of prescription, nor 
in the vain belief that any scheme can obviate the need of 
independent method and attack. These suggestions are the 
embodiment of experience and observation gleaned from 
many sources, as well as of the conviction of instructors in- 
timately concerned in both secondary and higher depart- 
ments of education. As such they are offered, in the hope 
that they may be of assistance in the introduction and 
organization of English studies in the secondary schools not 
only of California, but of other States. 

It is not presumed that the particular sequence of topics 
and texts (see Sequence of Studies), which has been 
adopted as the basis of these suggestions, is the best that can 
be devised. It has been chosen partly because it was not 
conceived solely with a view to the preparation of students 
for the University, but with the conviction that it oft'ered 
an indispensable training for those who never see the Uni- 
versity — who, at the end of their High School course, enter 
upon the discipline of life ; partly because it has stood the 
test of actual practice during a number of years in the 
High Schools of California, as a requirement for entrance to 
the University of California. It is, generally speaking, 
more stringent and more comprehensive than the courses 
pursued in other parts of the country; and it has, more- 
over, the advantage of presenting an unbroken view of the 
subject. The scheme contemplates five recitations a week 



Introduction. 9 

during a four years' course, beginning with the ninth 
grammar grade. It is thought that for the proper assimila- 
tion of collateral reading, and for fitting practice in Eng- 
lish composition, anything significantly less than this allot- 
ment will be inadequate to secure the permanent efficiency 
of the curriculum. 

In the consideration of method of instruction, ques- 
tions of aim, scope, topics, and time are. of course, in- 
volved. As to the first, it is the opinion of the writers 
that the aim of secondary instruction in English is to 
enable the pupil to write and speak with clearness, vigor, 
and grace ; to acquaint him, at first hand, with a few of 
the best literary products of English and American 
thought ; to cultivate a sense of literary style, to inculcate 
a love for the best literature, and to develop the creative 
faculty and the nobler sentiments and ideals. This aim, 
in general, underlies the Sequence of Studies that follows. 
The consideration of special aims, of scope of study, and 
of periods allotted to individual topics, will be found under 
the Suggestions to Teachers. 



CHAPTER I. 

Sequence of Studies. 
§1. General Statement : University Requirements. The 
topics of Grammar, Word-Study, Composition and Rhetoric 
are involved more or less directly in all the studies of the 
course, and therefore are not separately listed in this sug- 
gested sequence. They are not, however, on that account 
to be omitted or neglected. With reference to times and 
methods of instruction in them, the teacher is referred to 
occasional suggestions in the paragraphs which immed- 
iately follow, and under their proper headings in the next 
section. 



10 English in Secondary Schools. 

The following discussion covers in general the require- 
ments for entrance in English to the University of Cali- 
fornia. But for the particular items as required from year 
to year, and for substitutions allowed to accredited High 
Schools, see the Register, or the Admission Circular of each 
year, which may be obtained from the Recorder of the 
Faculties, Berkeley. For the year 1905-06 the specific re- 
quirements are as follows. Subjects A and 1 are prescribed 
for all students ; Subject 14 is optional under certain con- 
ditions with Greek, Latin, French or German. 

A. Oral and Written Expression. Training in this 
subject enters into the proper treatment of all topics of 
study taken up in the school course, and extends to speaking 
and oral reading as well as to writing. Its aim is to secure 
to the student the ability to use his mother-tongue cor- 
rectly, clearly, and pertinently on all lines upon which his 
thought is exercised. 

In and after August, 1905, an examination in this sub- 
ject will be required of all candidates for undergraduate 
standing. The examination will be held in Berkeley, and 
will be conducted by a committee appointed for that 
purpose. 

Subject 1. (2 units.) The examination presupposes 
thorough acquaintance with the following works together 
with the practical knowledge of grammar and the funda- 
mental principles of rhetoric implied in such acquaintance : 
(1) The Lady of the Lake; (2) Ivanhoe or the Alhambra; 
(3) the best Ballads, Heroic Lays, and Poems of National- 
ity, — in all about 1500 lines; (4) Classical and Teutonic 
Mythology; (5) The following Poems: The Deserted Vil- 
lage, the Cotter's Saturday Night, Tarn O'Shanter, The 
Ancient Mariner, The Prisoner of Chillon (or Selections 
from Childe Harold), Horatius, Snow-bound; (6) The 
Merchant of Venice; (7) Julius Caesar; (8) Essays and 
Addresses : Emerson 's The Fortune of the Republic, The 



Sequence of Studies. 11 

American Scholar; Lowell's Democracy, Lincoln (two for 
stndy; one for reading.)* 

Accredited schools may avail themselves of the fol- 
lowing list of substitutions: for (1), The Lay of the 
Last Minstrel; for (2), any one of these — Scott's Quen- 
tin Durward, Kenilworth, Woodstock, Rob Roy, Tales 
of a Grandfather, Irving 's Sketch-Book, his Tales of a 
Traveler, Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, Tom 
Brown at Rugby, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote; for (3), 
an equivalent amount of purely literary selections from the 
Bible (e.g.. Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Esther), or The Pilgrim's 
Progress; for (4), (rt.) Classic Myths in English Literature 
(except Chapters I-III) or the equivalent in any standard 
text-book: or (b) Classic Myths {one-half), i.e.. about 200 
pages covering approximately the material of §§ 16-56, 
65-67, 70-100, 104-107, 111-125, 132-164, 177-186, or an 
equivalent from any standard authority, — and Epic Selec- 
tions {one-half), viz., the Iliad in translation, Bks. I, VI, 
XXII, and XXIV, or the Odyssey in translation, the 
Episode of Ulysses among the Phaeacians, or any other 
four books; or (c) The whole of the Iliad or the Odyssey 
in translation, and a familiarity with the characteristics 
and stories of the more important Gods and heroes of Greek 
and Teutonic (Norse and Old German) Mythology;! for 
(5), short poems of similar scope aud character; for (6), .\s 
You Like It, Midsummer Night's Dream. Twelfth Night, 
The Tempest; for (8), An equivalent amount in the best 
prose explanatory of American ideals of citizenship, such 
as: Washington's Inaugural of 1789; Jefferson's of 1801; 

"Items marked "for reading" are not for class-recitatjon, but 
for perusal outside of school with reports or discussions in class once a 
week or fortnight. The examination upon such items does not pre- 
suppose acquaintance with minute details. Whatever credit the pupil 
may acquire by his answers will be applied to offset deficiencies in 
other respects, or still further to improve his standing. 

t Such familiarity may be acquired either from systematic study 
in connection with the epic chosen, or from study in connection with 
the interpretation of the masterpieces of literature prescribed for the 
rest of the course, English 1 and 14. 



12 English in Secondary Schools. 

Everett on Franklin, Washington, The Pilgrim Fathers; 
Choate on American Nationality, Daniel Webster; Sumner 
on The Scholar: Curtis on The Puritan Spirit, The Public 
Duty of Educated Men ; Bryce on The Strength of Ameri- 
can Democracy (American Commonwealth, Chapter 
XCIX). 

Subject 14. The examination both in 14a and 14b 
presupposes a thorough acquaintance with the works covered 
as regards organization of thought and its development, 
style, metrical structure, place in literary history, life of the 
author, and relation to the age. 

14a. (1 unit.) (1) Tennyson's Idylls of the King (for 
carefvil study, The Passing of Arthur; for reading*' with 
occasional reports in class, two of the following: the Holy 
Grail, Lancelot and Elaine, Guinevere, Enid, Gareth and 
Lynette) ; (2) Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal, and the 
Commemoration Ode; (3) Macaulay's Clive or Warren 
Hastings (for reading) ;* (4) Henry Esmond, or Silas Mar- 
ner and the Vicar of Wakefield; (5) Milton's L 'Allegro, II 
Penseroso and Comus; (6) Sir Eoger de Coverley. 

While the regular examination is confined to these 
items, accredited schools may make such substitutions as the 
following: For (1), Similar selections from the poetry of 
chivalry, or The Princess; for (3), The Second Essay on the 
Earl of Chatham; for (4), One of the following: The New- 
comes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Tale of 
Two Cities, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Our 
Mntual Friend, Oliver Twist, The Cloister and the Hearth; 
for (5) Comus, — Paradise Lost, Book 1, or 2, or 5, or 6; 
for (6), an equivalent amount from Addison's Select Es- 
says, the Essays of Elia, the Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table, Stevenson's Virginibus Puerisque, or Burrough's 
Essays, or Warner's Back-log Studies, or Curtis 's Prue 
and I. 

146. (1 unit). (1) Arguments and Orations: Burke's 
Speech before the Electors at Bristol; Macaulay's First 



Sequence of Studies. 13 

Speech on the Reform Bill; Webster's Reply to Hayne; 
(2) The Essay, literary or ethical: Carlyle's Essay on 
Burns, or Emerson's Compensation and Self-Reliance (for 
reading * with occasional reports in class) ; (3) A general 
outline of English Literature, illustrated by the study, in 
chronological order, of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canter- 
bury Tales; Shakespeare's Macbeth (reading and reports) ; 
Milton's Lycidas and Sonnets ii, xvi, xix, xxii; Gray's 
Elegy; Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Ode on the Intima- 
tions of Immortality and Ode to Duty; Keat's Eve of St. 
Agnes and the Nightingale; Shelley's The Cloud and the 
Skylark; Browning's A Transcript from Euripides (in 
Balaustion's Adventure), or shorter poems equivalent in 
amount; Arnold's Scholar-Gipsy (or The Forsaken Mer- 
man and Rugby Chapel) ; Tennesson's Oenone. 

Schools on the accredited list may make such substitu- 
tions as the following: For (1) any three oratorical master- 
pieces of argument (including one of Burke's) ; for 
(2), literary: one of the following: Carlyle or Macaulay 
on Boswell's Life of Johnson, an equivalent in Boswell's 
Life, Macaulay 's Addison (^), and Milton (|), an ec^uiva- 
lent from Lowell's Literary Essays such as his Chaucer, or 
from Arnold's, such as his Preface to the Poems of Words- 
worth (-1) and his Emerson (^), Ruskin's Sesame, Har- 
rison's Choice of Books; ethical: an equivalent from 
Bacon 's Essays, or from Moulton 's edition of the Proverbs, 
the Psalms, the Book of Job, or the writings attributed to 
St. John. It is also recommended that, so far as time may 
permit, standard English poems not included in this list, 
but illustrative of the history of literature, and the best 
short poems of our American authors, be read in class, 
though not necessarily for purposes of minute study. 

§ 2. Simple Narrative Poetry. The Lady of the Lake 
or The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 



See note under Subject 1. 



14 English in Secondary ScJiools. 

Exercise in composition, both written and oral, should 
accompany this study, and should concern itself chiefly 
with the more important elements and features of narra- 
tive style — clearness, sequence, massing of detail, and 
above all, sustained interest. Beginning' with the most ele- 
mentai-y form, the simple narrative paragraph — the single 
episode or incident, — the exercise should gradually in- 
crease in extent and scope, until it includes all the ordinary 
concomitants and supporters of good narrative; notably 
brief description, exposition, and the play of thought and 
feeling. Incidentally there should be attained some practi- 
cal acquaintance with the elements of rhetoric and of 
prosody : imagery, figures, and metrical forms, so far as 
these are brought out in the poem ; and a clear sense of the 
most obvious diiferences between the prose manner and the 
poetic. 

§ 3. Simple Prose. Ivanhoe or the Aihambra — works 
suffused with a glamour of romantic interest, and an im- 
aginative play akin to what is found in the poems just pre- 
ceding. 

§ 4. Ballads. Survivals of an early and simple-hearted 
poetry, with striking features of theme, of treatment, and 
of metrical form. These, with Lays of Heroism and Poems 
of Nationality, afford a fitting close to the short cycle of 
romantic and legendary literature in which they are here 
placed, and a natural transition to the next. For sug- 
gestions concerning the study of this kind of poetry see 
section 25. 

§ 5. Classical and Teutonic Mythology. The main 
purposes of this study are first, to familiarize the pupil 
with such commonplaces of tradition, reference, and allu- 
sion as are continually iised by English authors. Second, 
to awaken the historic sense in him by the consideration 
of the primitive attitude of our Greek and Teutonic pre- 
decessors toward nature, conduct, religion, science, poetry 



Sequence of Studies. 15 

and philosophy : in other words to give him some idea of 
civilization and art as a growth, and of himself and his 
social environment as a product. Third, to foster im- 
aginative thought and healthy poetic appreciation. 
Fourth, by frequent illustrations from poetry, painting 
and sculpture, to introduce him to a wider and nobler 
realm of artistic creation than he is otherwise likely to 
know. Both myths and epics, or selections from epics 
(Iliad and Odyssey) should afford subjects for constant 
exercise in narration, comparison and description, oral and 
written. They will afford, also, models for imaginative 
invention which may be applied in the treatment of local 
wonders and beauties of nature ; and material for the exer- 
cise of the moral judgment in consideration of the con- 
duct of the heroes and heroines of old. Pupils may, in the 
latter discipline, be led to recognize the difference between 
ancient and modern standards of right and wrong. To 
these ends, and for the supply of further nutriment it is 
important that the study of any handbook of mythology 
be accompanied by the reading of the classic originals — or 
of translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek dram- 
atists, the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, — by the class when 
possible, by the teacher for the class when not. The con- 
verse also holds true, to the proper appreciation as well 
as the intelligent reading of the Iliad or the Odyssey, a 
familiarity with Greek mythology in general is indispens- 
able. For details concerning the method of study, see 
suggestions in section 26. 

§ 6. SJiort Poems, chiefly narrative or descriptive, but 
with strongly marked subjective elements of thought and 
feeling. Their study should furnish opportunity for dis- 
tinguishing and properly characterizing these elements and 
for associating them with the personality of the authors and 
the prevailing thought of their times. New metrical forms 
should be mastered as they occur. Whatever has been ac- 
quired of grammatical and rhetorical apparatus, should be 



16 English in Secondary Schools. 

made to subserve the purposes of interpretation and criti- 
cism. For suggestions concerning classwork see section 27. 

§ 7. Introduction to the Shakespearian Drama. The 
Merchant of Venice and Julius Cassar. The method of 
teaching the drama in secondary schools is discussed in 
section 28 of the following chapter; and additional hints 
for advanced study by teachers are given in Chapter IV. 

§ 8. Essays and Addresses illustrative of the ideals 
of x\merican citizenship. 

This requirement is meant to provide opportunities 
for promoting as far as may be the pupil's ethical develop- 
ment in its civic aspects, and to serve as a means of fit- 
ting him for the intelligent appreciation of the ideals of 
social and political conduct as expressed in literature. The 
treatment, therefore, needs to be such as will quicken the 
moral sense, contribute to the formation of civic ideals as 
a matter of daily thought and action, and lead to clear 
thinking on such topics as freedom, equality, citizenship, 
justice, public spirit, patriotism, etc. Given intellectual 
grasp and clear-eyed enthusiasm on the part of the teacher, 
his success with the class will depend very largely on his 
skill in utilizing the previous thought and experience of his 
pupils and in furthering their appropriation of the enlight- 
ened patriotism, of which the Essays and Addresses are the 
expression, by w^ell-directed discussions and by concrete il- 
lustrations drawn from life and literature. 

Here is the natural line of demarcation between the 
more elementary and the advanced work of the High 
School course in English. For the remainder of the course 
(listed in the Register as English 14a and 145) Greek or 
Latin, French or German, may, in certain cases, be sub- 
stituted on entrance to the University of California. But 
it is believed that the following studies (9-16) admirably 
supplement the preceding ; and it is noteworthy that in the 



Sequence of Studies. 17 

best High Schools the whole course is pursued by most of 
the pupils. 

§ 9. Poems, English and American, illustrative of the 
nineteenth centuiy treatment and recasting of Arthurian 
romance: Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Lowell's Vis- 
ion of Sir Launfal. With this last has been associated, as 
illustrative of the American ideal of patriotism, the Com- 
memoration Ode by the same author. On the study of this 
more highly finished or self-conscious kind of poetry re- 
marks will be found in section 27. 

§ 10. TJte Historical Essay, Macaulay's Lord Clive, 
Warren Hastings, or the Second Essay on the Earl of 
Chatham^ — for reading rather than for concentrated study. 
Such literature is valuable here as an introduction to a 
distinct type of modern prose, direct, forcible, brilliant, 
and heavily charged with latent argument. It appeals 
strongly, as Arnold has pointed out, to the nascent intelli- 
gence ; and properly handled it becomes a powerful stimu- 
lus to the study of character, morals, political conditions, 
and problems, and of history itself, of which it is a pendant. 

§ 11. Tl>.e Novel. Henry Esmond, or Silas Marner and 
the Vicar of Wakefield. For suggestions see section 31 in 
the next chapter. 

§ 12. The Poetry of Milton. L 'Allegro, II Penseroso, 
and Comus — the flowery lawns, the shaded avenues, and 
the enchanted wood where one first encounters the poet of 
the Paradise Lost, and listens to the noble preludings of 
that ''organ voice of England." By comparison of these 
with the group of short poems studied earlier in this 
course, the student should come to recognize — though not 
of course to define in technical terms — the sustained state- 
liness and severity of Milton's form, both metrical and 
verbal, the splendor of his imagery, the ideality of his 
thought and conception, and his profound conviction of the 
reality and power of goodness, and of its assured victory in 



18 English in Secondary Schools. 

the great battle with evil which is the supreme fact of 
Milton's world. See also section 27. 

§ 13. TJte Addisonian Essay: Sir Roger de Coverley. 
Most obviously within the field of this study are : the strik- 
ing aspects of contemporary life and manners therein por- 
trayed; the author's quiet but very effective satire; his 
subtle and solvent humor, whose presence even is apt to 
escape the notice of our young people, accustomed as they 
often are to humor only of the native sort. On all these 
points suggestive comparisons and contrasts may be found 
in Pope (the metrical satires and epistles), Johnson, and 
especially Irving, Holmes, and Lamb. Another interest 
attaches to these papers growing out of the place they hold 
among the beginnings of English periodical literature, and 
in the historical development of the Essay, and even of the 
Novel. But these topics more properly belong to the his- 
torical outline suggested under section 16 below. 

§ 14. Orations and Arguments: Three oratorical mas- 
terpieces of argument, including one of Burke's. The chief 
value of these selections lies first in their treatment of far- 
reaching questions in the light of universal ideas, and, sec- 
ond, in their masterly handling of argument. About these 
two points the instruction will naturally center. For 
further suggestions see next chapter, section 30. 

§ 15. The Essay, Literary or Ethical: Carlyle's Essay 
on Burns, or Emerson's Compensation and Self-Reliance : 
for reading with occasional reports and conferences in 
class. 

§ 16. An Outline of English Literature. The salient 
facts, features, personalities and periods of that literature 
as illustrated by the study in chronological order of a 
series of works dating from Chaucer to Tennyson. While 
this study, of course, involves new information on many 
points, its intended scope is objective and synthetical rather 
than doctrinal and theoretical. Its object is to place in 
series, and to relate to each other in their proper groups. 



Sequence of Studies. 19 

objects already separately known, rather than to inculcate 
a received tradition. The features, therefore, of the 
separate authors, schools, and periods which are exempli- 
fied in the works themselves, are those which claim chief 
attention. In order to supplement the rather scanty ma- 
terial already at hand, a short list of poems not hitherto 
studied is prescribed ; but each of the works already studied 
should be recalled in its proper place, and if necessary re- 
viewed, that it may be brought distinctively within the 
field of this comprehensive view. The connective material 
required, whether historical or critical, is no more than a 
wise instructor can easily present topically and incidentally 
as it is needed; and is probably most effective if so pre- 
sented, or by means of some collection of the required 
masterpieces in their historical setting of biographies, 
movements and periods, or by occasional reference to 
standard authorities. The study, in class, of a text-book 
dealing like many with numerous details of purely histori- 
cal and minor significance is not at all recommended. A 
caution moreover should be observed in the matter of mem- 
orizing dates. A date is obviously nothing but a means of 
putting an event in relation with the great forces and 
movements of history: — in this case, of putting an author's 
effective career (not merely his birth and death) in con- 
nection with his environment, or of putting an epoch- 
making book in relation with the social, political, and in- 
tellectual movements of tlie English race. A date is of no 
avail whatever, if it be not retained in memory ; nor if re- 
tained, if it do not become the symbol of that relation, 
and so lay hold of the other term of it. The corollaries are 
obvious : 1st, require but few dates to be memorized, and 
be sure that they are the most important ones for the ends 
indicated; 2nd, be sure that they lay hold of the world 
outside of literature ; and 3d, be sure that they are remem- 
bered. For further suggestions see section 27 (3) in the 
next chapter. 



20 English in Secondary Schools. 

A notable recent discussion of the principles which 
underlie the teaching of English, and an attempt to include 
both lower and high schools in one rational method and 
sequence of instruction in English, may be found in Per- 
cival Chubb 's The Teaching of English (Macmillan). The 
work is one which every teacher of English should know, 
not merely for what it has to offer on these greater ques- 
tions, but also for its wise and practical suggestions on all 
the various phases of the English teacher's work. 



CHAPTEE II. 

Suggestions to Teachers. 

§ 17. Topics and Periods. On the general distribution 
of studies and the periods to be allotted to each, the follow- 
ing paragraphs from the recommendation made by the 
English Conference to the Committee on Secondary School 
Studies of the National Council of Education (1893, pp. 
90-91) should be especially noted: 

"The Conference is of opinion that the study of Eng- 
lish should be pursued in the High School for five hours a 
week during the entire course of four years. This would 
make the total amount of available time not far from eight 
hundred hours (or periods). 

' ' The study of literature and training in the expression 
of thought, taken together, are the fundamental elements in 
any proper High School course in English, and demand not 
merely the largest share of time and attention, but con- 
tinuous and concurrent treatment throughout the four 
years. The Conference therefore recommends the assign- 
ment of three hours a week for four years (or four hun- 
dicd and eighty hours in the total) to the study of litera- 
ture, and the assignment of two hours a week for the first 
two years, and one hour a week for the last two years ( or 
two hundred and forty hours in the total) to training in 



Suggestions to Teachers. 21 

composition. By the study of literature the Conference 
means the study of the works of good authors, not the study 
of a manual of literary history. 

"Ehetoric, during the earlier part of the High School 
course, connects itself directly, on the one hand, with the 
study of literature, furnishing the student with apparatus 
for analysis and criticism, and, on the other hand, with 
practice in composition, acquainting the student with 
principles and maxims relating to effective discourse. For 
this earlier stage, therefore, extending through the first 
two years, no assignment of hours to rhetoric has been 
deemed advisable, and an assignment of one hour a week in 
the third year (a total of forty hours) is thought sufficient 
for any systematic view of rhetoric that should be at- 
tempted in the High School. It will be observed, however, 
that if the teacher has borne in mind the practical uses of 
rhetoric in the first two years, he will have conveyed the 
essentials of the art (with or without references to a text- 
book) before the systematic view begins, so that this view 
will be a kind of codification of principles already applied 
in practice. 

' ' The history of English literature should be taught in- 
cidentally, in connection with the pupil's study of particu- 
lar authors and works; the mechanical use of manuals of 
literature should be avoided, and the committing to memory 
of names and dates should not be mistaken for culture. In 
the fourth year, however, an attempt may be made, by 
means of lectures or otherwise, to give the pupil a view of 
our literature as a whole and to acquaint him with the re- 
lations between periods. This instruction should accom- 
pany — not supersede — a chronologically arranged sequence 
of authors. In connection with it a syllabus or brief primer 
may be used. 

"To the subject of Historical and Systematic (or For- 
mal) Grammar, one hour a week in the fourth year (a total 
of forty hours) may be assigned. 



22 English in Secondary Schools. 

"In the present state of text-books and teachers, the 
study of the History of English Language cannot, perhaps, 
be generally, or even extensively, introduced into the High 
Schools. It is the opinion of the Conference, however, that 
certain parts of that study may be profitably undertaken 
during the last year of the High School course, and that 
some systematic knowledge of the history of the language is 
of value to the student M^ho goes no farther than the High 
School, as well as to the student preparing for college." 

With this outline of subjects and periods the English 
Department of the University of California in general con- 
curs, but not as regards the systematic study of Rhetoric, 
of Formal and Historical Grammar, and of the History of 
the English Language during the last year of the High 
School course. Apart from the difficulty of finding place for 
these studies in a course already very full, it would seem 
that for the profitable pursuit of them neither the material 
requisite for a proper induction, nor the analytical power 
needful for dealing with that material can be assumed to be 
present at this stage of the pupil's development. But the 
department would call attention to, and emphasize, the 
opinion expressed by the Conference, that "the best results 
in the teaching of English in High Schools cannot be 
secured without the aid given by the study of some other 
language, and that Latin and German, by reason of their 
fuller inflectional system, are especially suited to this end." 
Not only is it impossible for a pupil, without the study of 
Latin, to obtain the discipline and the culture pertaining 
to an English education, but it is vain for a teacher, with- 
out a fair acquaintance with Latin or Greek, and at least 
one modern foreign language, to attempt instruction in 
English. 

§ 18. Oral Reading. Prom beginning to end of the 
course in English, practice in oral reading should obtain. 
It is an essential introduction to, and accompaniment of, 
effective speech; it is necessary to the communication of 



Suggestions to Teachers. 23 

the written or printed thought. The pupil should be 
trained to read to the class first from preparation, then 
at sight, not poems alone or orations, but the simple prose 
of stories and essays, the paragraph from the newspaper, 
the magazine article, his own composition too. He should 
learn to forecast the thought, and gather it as he proceeds, 
to express it clearly, sympathetically and effectively so 
that others may understand Avhat he understands. Slovenly 
habits of enunciation must be eradicated, especially those 
of mumbling, stumbling, slurring and "speaking through 
the nose." Correct pronunciation must be secured. To 
this end all teachers, not only those of English, should co- 
operate. They should also correct the too frequent mono- 
tone of speech, as disagreeable and tedious. By example 
as well as by practice the pupil may be taught that grace 
and effectiveness result from raising and lowering the 
voice in accord with the sense of the passage read; that 
distinctness is synonymous not with shouting but with 
ease of utterance, with smooth, clear-cut and incisive 
sounds, as well as with the open and resonant; and that 
emphasis depends not only upon volume and pitch, but 
upon the time-element as well,- — upon the rate of the utter- 
ance, now faster, now slower, and yet again momentarily 
pausing to enhance the effect of that which is to follow. The 
mechanical part of reading and speaking is but a develop- 
ment of what is natural in conversation, narrative, argu- 
ment and appeal. To neglect one's natural resources as so 
manj^ speakers and readers do is sheer folly. Frequently 
the utterance counts for two-thirds in the effect of that 
which is uttered. The thought of the wise is smothered in 
the mouth of a sloven. 

A.— Language. 

§ 19. Word-Study. Words are the sole elements of 
all literary expression ; upon their weight and color depend 
all possible literary effects. Therefore they must never 



24 English in Secondary Schools. 

be neglected in a study of literature. The study of them 
begins empirically in infancy, and, in one way and another, 
they take up a large share of the child's attention through- 
out his school course. What remains for the High School to 
do, is to concentrate and crystallize these efforts into a 
liabit of looking keenly at words — of recognizing their 
kinship and groupings, — and to teach the pupil how to 
ascertain for himself whatever he needs to know about 
them. He is to be trained, that is, in the use of standard 
dictionaries, so that all the information they afford may 
be within his easy reach; and, further, is to be trained to 
apply this information to a word in any given context, 
with a view to determining its precise value and force in 
that context. It is thought that this training can be better 
accomplished in connection with opportunities as they 
naturally come in one's way, than by perfunctory study 
of any list of words or of any text-book of Word- Analysis. 
And attainment may be best shown, not by direct appeal 
to the memory, but by testing the pupil's power to find, 
and intelligently to use in actual cases, the information 
accessible in works of reference. 

One caution seems still to need repetition. Questions 
concerning the derivation and the history of words are 
questions as to what the facts are. In seeking the answers 
to such questions, therefore, it is idle to appeal — as many 
nevertheless do — to some inner light of reason, to some 
ready conjecture or fancy, or even to the apparently 
learned etymologies of our earlier dictionaries. On this 
particular point, as well as for information on other lines 
more generally sought in such works, the Century Diction- 
ary is the best work now available. It is in fact so valu- 
able a help in all departments of study that no High School 
should be without it. 

§ 20. Grammar. The knowledge of Grammar which a 
pupil entering the High School may be presumed to have, 
may be stated as follows: (1) A thorough, practical 



Suggestions to Teachers. 25 

acquaintance with the elements of English Grammar: — its 
Parts of Speech with their ordinary functions, its few re- 
maining Inflections, its necessary classifications and term- 
inology; and (2) such insight into structural and syntacti- 
cal relations as will enable the pupil to analyze* correctly 
any sentence involving no special or idiomatic difficulties. 
With these there should go (3) the correct spelling and 
pronunciation of words actually in the pupil's use, and 
especially the habit of noting the spelling and ascertain- 
ing the pronunciation of new words as they come to him. 
This last, it must be remembered, is a piece of work which 
is never finished, and so can never be dismissed; but the 
other tw^o represent a definite and limited attainment, 
quite within grammar-school possibilities, and that attain- 
ment should be rigorously exacted. 

This elementary grammatical knowledge and this logical 
power of analysis presupposed upon entrance, should be 
kept in constant groAvth and exercise throughout the High 
School course. In the study of literature they should ever 
be the familiar instruments of investigation, of interpre- 
tation, and of criticism — means for unfolding the variety 
and resources of literary art and expression. In the com- 
position exercise they should be constantly appealed to as 
the only sure means whereby correction may be made 
generic — applicable to whole groups of errors — instead of 
specific, or limited to the particular case in hand. Thus 
they should lead up to self -correction and self-criticism. 
The habitual use of such instruments, even without special 
study to that end, will increase their scope and efficiency. 
Nevertheless it may be well from time to time as need 
appears, to devote an hour to some definite grammatical 



* It seeins necessary to remark in passing that the device known 
as a " diagram " is no analysis, as some suppose it to be, but only a 
convenient — though very inadequate — scheme of notation. The only 
true analysis is a mental process; and any teaching which con- 
founds a tangle of lines with that process, or makes the thinking 
dependent upon the lines, or substitutes for mental effort and insight 
some superficial and readily-acquired knack, is simply pernicious. 



26 English in Secondary Schools. 

topic, thus insuring a fresh survey and a consideration 
of points unnoticed before. 

In spite of obvious drawbacks, one of the best books for 
such topical reference is probably Whitney's Essentials of 
English Grammar (Ginn & Co.). Another, better adapted 
to the needs of the school-room, is Long-man's English 
Grammar (Longmans, 1901). Both present, it is true, the 
older conception and method of grammar, but the presenta- 
tion is free from the gross errors and confident ignorance 
which disfigure many, if not most, of our school texts on 
this subject. The older tradition though feebly grasped 
and dimly understood, is firmly intrenched not only in all 
our lower schools, but in the training of those who teach in 
them as well. To break abruptly with that tradition on 
entering the High School is not at all necessary for the 
purposes of English study as outlined above. Nor will it 
be desirable or even feasible to do so until we have teachers 
trained in linguistic method, familiar with the facts and 
the history of their mother tongue, and until we have text- 
books adapted to this stage of instruction. 

It will be noticed that no mention has been made of 
the science of Grammar — of Grammar as a systematic 
study and ordering of the facts of language, pursued for 
its own sake, and as an important discipline of the mind. 
Before such study can be properly undertaken there needs 
to be abundant linguistic material at command; — not 
merely large acquaintance with the resources and usages 
of present English, but knowledge of its earlier and its 
earliest forms, of its long history and development; and 
beyond these, an effective acquaintance with some of the 
related tongues as well. Before some such plane is reached, 
all study of language must be largely empirical. What- 
ever fragments of system may be acquired, are not only 
fragments but are hearsay and tradition. The real study 
of grammar then can hardly be for the High School period, 
but rather for the later years of the college course. 



Suggestions to Teachers. 27 

§ 21. But even for work on the old, empirical lines, 
and for the uses indicated above, the teacher's knowledge 
needs to be far fuller and surer than is often the case. 
His first great difficulty is almost always ignorance of the 
English language in its historical aspect and its develop- 
ment: and his second is a direct result of the first: namely, 
bondage to an unthinking tradition which continually mis- 
takes and misinterprets the facts of our current speech. 
Even so the case is not hopeless, if only he be in earnest 
to amend it; but there is no time to be lost. A careful 
study of such a book as Lounsbury's History of the Eng- 
lish Language, or Emerson's or Champney's work on the 
same subject, will be a good beginning of the cure of his 
first trouble, and will open up the way to direct study of 
the language itself. His second trouble is not so easy to 
prescribe for, since it is really a bad mental habit and atti- 
tude. But one who is in earnest to have his eyes opened 
and to shake off his fetters might study with profit Sweet's 
New English Grammar Part I, Introduction. The author 
cannot be vouched for as a safe guide in all respects; but 
in spite of confused thought and expression, and in spite 
of an arbitrary and sometimes barbarous nomenclature, he 
can show the student what it is to look at language as it 
is, not as it is supposed to be ; and to see it for oneself. 
From these beginnings the way will be plain — though by 
no means easy — to further attainment and mastery. But 
of one thing the teacher should beware. Let him not yield 
to the temptation to impose his newly-caught ideas and 
half-digested knowledge of this stage upon the innocents 
under his charge. Let it for the present suffice that his 
added knoAvledge keep him from leading them astray. 

§ 22. Written Composition. The object of this training 
is three-fold: (1) To develop the sense of Form, Order, 
and Coherence through habitual practice of the related 
virtues in composition ; namely, good mechanical form, gen- 
eral legibility and neatness of manuscript, correct Ian- 



28 English in Secondary Schools. 

guage, spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing, orderly 
structure and arrangement of parts; (2) to emancipate the 
deliberate expression of thought from the terror and con- 
straint which usually invest it in the minds of children ; 
and (3) to stimulate into vivid action the mental powers 
of perception, invention, synthesis, and the organization of 
thought and experience. As for the first object, eternal 
vigilance is the price of attaining it; and this fact cannot 
be urged upon teachers too often. The most common form 
of deficiency among students who apply to enter a uni- 
versity^ — and not a few of these actually get in and get 
through — is that they can neither read nor write. The 
discouraging feature in all such cases is that the ghosts of 
these deficiencies are forever barring the student's way to 
better things. This is not the place to discuss means which 
may be used in aggravated cases; but insistence that no 
scribbling be done, that all writing — even of first drafts- 
be done with full attention to spelling and punctuation, 
that errors be not found for the pupil, but hy him, in 
proof-reader fashion, and that rewriting of the page be the 
only correction allowed, — these are measures which may 
transform the habitual misspeller, if they do not first trans- 
late him out of the school altogether. The second object is 
to be attained by making sure in every case that the 
material of thought is there, ready and M'aiting to be em- 
bodied in expression; and by such constant practice and 
familiarity with composition as shall make it seem no 
longer a rare and difficult feat. The last object is to be 
sought through interest in the topics selected, through their 
direct and near relation to the pupil's experience and 
thought, and through that consequent sense of standing 
on firm ground, which makes further steps of thought seem 
easy and exhilarating. 

In the earlier terms of the High School course, com- 
position in some form, oral or written, should be an almost 
daily exercise ; and this, it is thought, may be accomplished 



Suggestions to Teachers. 29 

without making unreasonable demands upon the pupil's 
time and strength. One plan which has produced excellent 
results, is to require each pupil to keep in his desk a suit- 
able blank book, and in it to write each day, carefully and 
with ink, at least five lines of whatever he will — frivolities 
alone excepted. The teacher encourages the pupils to con- 
sult him freely about this work, but avoids undue inter- 
ference. At intervals he looks over the work with the 
writer, and makes general suggestions — being particularly 
careful not to discourage, — and now and then has a good 
and spirited bit of work read aloud. After a good deal of 
floundering, of course, the bent of the pupil's real interest 
begins to show itself, and his writing becomes consecutive 
and coherent. He begins to think and observe from day 
to day ivith a view to ivriting; and an important point has 
thus been gained. But this alone is not sufficient; there 
is in it no drill. To supplement it, let fifteen minutes be 
taken, say thrice a week, from the regular period of the 
English recitation for an exercise whose object is to develop 
promptness and concentration of effort, correctness of 
form, and sense of proportion and limit. Announce some 
definite subject, preferably from the field of current studies 
or happenings, in order that all may be possessed of the 
material — an incident from school life, a story from the 
history lesson of the previous day, a familiar myth, or the 
gist of a short poem from the English class. Let ten 
minutes be spent in writing with ink a single draft of a 
short, complete paragraph upon the subject, limited, say, 
to a single page of commercial note. Let the remaining 
five minutes be spent in prompt exchange and correction 
of these papers by the members of the class according to 
some prearranged scheme, or else in having a number of 
them read aloud. The papers are then brought to the 
teacher. It is not necessary that every exercise be further 
reviewed by him ; but it is necessary that he keep track of 
each pupil's work, and that he follow it up in all cases 



30 English in Secondary Schools. 

which need attention. As the results of this drill are 
attained, its frequency may be diminished, and its scope 
may be extended somewhat both in subject and in actual 
amount of production. It must be remembered, however, 
that it is essentially an exercise both in speed and in 
technique, and so must not be extended to the point of 
fatigue. It probably should be continued as an occasional 
exercise throughout the course. 

Compositions requiring special study and premedita- 
tion should be gradually introduced, making sure in every 
case that their topics are well within the reach both of tlie 
pupil's thought and of his interest. These topics will ver\^ 
naturally connect themselves with the pupil's study and 
reading, but the effort should ever be made to connect them 
with his experience and life as well. Even before they 
are put into M^ritten form, such compositions should have 
careful supervision with reference to material and arrange- 
ment of parts; they should be carefully criticised when 
finished, and, if they need it, should be rewritten, the pupil 
making his own corrections after the nature of the faults 
has been made clear to him. Work of this sort should grow 
in power and interest to the very end of the course. 

For detailed suggestion the teacher is referred to such 
works as the following: Miss Irene Hardy's Composition 
Exercises (Henry Holt & Co.) — an admirable exemplifica- 
tion, by a veteran teacher, of the fields of thought which 
naturally attract young minds, and the variety of topics 
which may be found in them suitable to this purpose ; Scott 
and Denny's Elementary Composition (Allyn & Bacon), a 
practical work intended for the earlier years of the High 
School course, combining freshness of method and interest 
with a wise restraint in the matter of teclmical and theoreti- 
cal instruction; Composition-Literature, a work by the 
same authors as the preceding, carrying out its methods 
on broader lines for the later years of the High School. 
For a wider view over this field the teacher may well 



Suggestions to Teachers. 31 

read Professor Wendell's English Composition (Charles 
Scribner's Sons). 

§ 23. Oral Composition. Opportunity should be found 
for oral composition, not only in set debates and talks 
appointed for this purpose, but far more in the daily recita- 
tions. In both, accuracy of knowledge, clearness of con- 
ception, sequence of arrangement, propriety of enuncia- 
tion and pronunciation, and grace of delivery must bo 
emphasized. Too rarely in the recitation is sufficient im- 
portance attached to the formation of the habit of com- 
plete and finished utterance — without prompting — of all 
that the pupil has to say upon the topic proposed. The 
sharp and rattling volley of question and answer has its 
function and place as a general quickener of thought 
throughout a class; while keen and skillful cross-question- 
ing in the Socratie form is a wonderful revealer of the 
gaps and shallows of individual knowledge. But no care- 
ful teacher will allow his skill in either of these methods, 
nor yet his own nervousness in the face of flagrant mis- 
statement, nor the impatient dissent of others in the class, 
to stand in the way of complete utterance on the part of the 
speaker. For the liabit of thus expressing one's self im- 
plies a habit of thought whose value in the intellectual life 
can scarcely be estimated — the habit of grasping things as 
wholes. 

Set debates, if not overdone, are of great value. They 
should always, however, be prepared and conducted under 
proper supervision. Reading, arrangement of thought, 
exposition, illustration, appeal, delivery — the use of simple, 
correct and steadily increasing vocabulary, should be the 
care of the teacher; and the teacher himself should be 
trained in the elements of effective speech. Otherwise pupils 
will inure themselves to clap-trap, ranting, provincial utter 
ance, slang, and all manner of vicious habits of thought, 
argument and delivery. Pains must be taken in the choice 
of subjects ; that they be neither too pretentious nor too 



32 English in Secondary Schools. 

trivial. Properly chosen they may subserve knowledge 
and wisdom at one and the same time. Pupils cannot but 
benefit by the consideration of ideals of life and citizen- 
ship, the lessons of history, the characters of men and 
women who have influenced civilization, the turning points 
in national development; most of all, perhaps, by the con- 
sideration of the larger life of their environment in connec- 
tion with school affairs and interests. 

It must be understood that the teaching of oral and 
written expression is incumbent not upon the English 
teacher alone. Insistence upon correct, effective and idio- 
matic speech, upon distinct utterance and proper pronun- 
ciation, upon accuracy of spelling and form in written 
composition is as vital a part of the instruction in Latin, 
Greek, French, German, grammar and translation, and of 
the recitations in history, mathematics and the natural 
sciences, as is training in specific knowledge and clear 
thinking. Even if it were attainable the latter would be 
useless without the former. That pupils cannot be expected 
to speak, read and write correctly unless their teachers in 
all subjects set the example should go without saying. Not 
infrequently the degraded English of one teacher defeats 
the effort of all the rest. 

§ 24. Rhetoric. The science of Rhetoric is closely allied 
both to Logic and to Grammar, and demands for its proper 
exposition (1) a wide acquaintance with literary forms 
and (2) a power of subtle analysis. It has, therefore, no 
proper place in the High School. But, as in the case of 
Grammar, many of its forms and elements are inevitably 
encountered at an early stage ; and if these be ma.stered 
thus objectively, they form a valuable apparatus of investi- 
gation and criticism, which work in with and supplement 
the similar apparatus derived from the grammatical side. 
(See above, under Grammar, § 21.) Nearly all the prin- 
ciples of composition which seem important at this stage 
and for these uses, may be derived from the study of the 



Suggestions to Teachers. 33 

Materials and the Mechanics of Expression ; i.e., Words, in 
their effective use and combination, Fibres of Speech; 
and effective Structure, whether of the sentence, of the 
paragraph, or of complete compositions. Besides these, 
there should be a good, practical understanding of those 
qualities of style which lie within the pupil's own attain- 
ment ; viz. : Simplicity and Clearness, and a speaking 
acquaintance with the more obvious aspects of Energy, 
Pathos, and Humor. 

Nearly all text-books on Rhetoric now in the field far 
transcend these simple limits, and most of them are so 
arranged that it is difficult to separate the desirable ele- 
ments from the undesirable. A better presentation of the 
necessary rhetorical apparatus may be found in some of 
the recent manuals of composition; as, for example in 
Scott and Denny's already noticed under § 22 above. 

B. — Literature. 

§ 25. hitroduction to Poetry, {a) Simple Ballads and 
Lays and Popular Songs. No better beginning can be 
recommended for pupils in poetry than the reading and 
learning of these poems in the English tongue that are at 
once simple and heai'ty and most truly characteristic of 
the people, their tradition, history and spirit; poems that 
were household words with our fathers and mothers, and 
lay close to the heart because they were of the heart ; poems 
which more often than not are all the truer art because 
they are not artful. 

It may have appeared to others, as it has to us, that 
literature in verse is not learned nor enjoyed nor even 
read by young or old as it used to be. One explanation 
of this neglect is, very probably, that in the place of un- 
sophisticated poetry, such as generations of our forefathers 
loved, there have been too frequently introduced into the 
schools, at too early a period, the masterpieces of con- 
sciously artistic, highly intellectual, and even sub.jective 



34 English in Secondanj Schools. 

verse. Of this illogical procedure the inevitable corollary 
is that not a few well-meaning but theory-ridden teachers 
— in their efforts to fix a youthful mind upon things 
literary designed for "grown-ups," highly cultivated at 
that — are driven to rhetorical, gerund-grinding, analytical, 
or quasi-philosophical, pseudo-scientific devices in handling 
that which should be the simplest of ideal devotions and 
delights. Now everybody who has not been spoiled by 
vagaries knows that the natural and healthy taste of the 
growing boy, when it is for literature at all, is for the litera- 
ture that while it informs manages to entertain — for the 
poetry that interprets because it deliglits; that is to say, 
for the spontaneous and healthy poetry of the Folk when 
it was a boy, or of that element in the Folk that preserves 
always the vigor and push of youth. 

If this kind of reading can contribute somewhat toward 
exploding the fallacy that poetry is something other than 
poetry, — material, forsooth, for translation, parsing, trope- 
hunting, rhetorical exercises, platitudinous preaching, or 
anything else extraneous to art, — it will have accomplished 
much. Of course all simple poetry, even that of bal- 
lads, lays and songs, has a lesson for him who can 
feel it. Like all good things it can't help blessing 
those who take it on faith. Its favors are, however, 
not for those who would conquer but for those who sur- 
render. The best way to study it is not to study but to 
enjoy. And this should be especially true of the poetry 
which we place in the hands of our youngest pupils ; if it 
cannot captivate it is an offense, a folly, — worse than that, 
a bore. Such poetry must be chiefly of an objective cast, 
of genuine sentiment, and of simple style. It must neither 
bewilder nor deliberately instruct. It must have the qual- 
ity of charming, of winning the reader to repeat and to 
murmur, and to learn because it is easier to do so than 
to forget. 



Suggestions to Teachers. 35 

These requisites are emphatically the characteristic of 
the ballads of olden time, direct, naive and easy to under- 
stand, — ballads made to say and to sing; stories of heroic 
adventure, romantic or supernatural; whilom fyttes and 
modern instances of patriotism and devotion; songs of 
homely sentiment, popular spirit, and nationality; themes 
mostly external and concrete,— the poetry of historv, such 
as appealed naively to the listening and consentanr jus 
crowd. If occasionally such poetry contains suggestio'i for 
the individual who reads and reflects, it is always of 'emo- 
tions simple and unsophisticated, universal, abiding, and 
sincere. It is the poetry of manly ideals, ancient but ever- 
living. 

For further statement of the purpose and method of 
this kind of reading, see the Preface to Gayley and Fla- 
herty's Poetry of the People (Ginn, 1903) ; for the char- 
acteristics and origin of the ballad, see the introduction to 
Armes' Old English Ballads and Folk-Songs (Macm., 
1904). Further information is supplied by Gummere in 
his Old English Ballads, and his Beginnings of Poetry; 
and in Kittredge & Child's Edition of Professor Child's 
English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 

§ 26. Introduction to Poetry. (&) Mythology in Litera- 
ture. The study of poetry must be approached not only 
from the imaginative but from the historical side; for the 
material of much of our poetry is to be found in the tradi- 
tions of the ancients. Unfortunately the "utilitarian" 
protest against the cultivation of "dead" languages has 
to a lamentable degree cut us off from these sources of our 
literature. An evident, though inadequate, means of tem- 
pering the consequence of this neglect of the classics is the 
study of them through translations and summaries. This 
means is less inadequate if the imaginative products of 
antiquity be studied in a garb somewhat resembling the 
original — the garb of modern poetry and art. For these 
reasons an acquaintance with the myths of the Greeks, 



36 English in Secondary ScJiools. 

the Komans, the Norsemen, and the Germans, as they are 
reproduced in the best sympathetic and artistic transla- 
tion, and in creative literature, is an excellent introduction 
to the detailed study of poetry. 

The benefits accruing^ from such a study of the classic 
myths are both general and specific. 

In general, classic mythology has been for poets a 
treasure-house replete with jewels. It has been for readers 
a clue to the labyrinth of art, not merely a thread of tradi- 
tion but of sympathy. It has led men to appreciate the 
motives and conditions of ancient art and literature, and 
the uniform and ordered evolution of the aesthetic sense. 
It has also quickened the imaginative and emotional facul- 
ties of the moderns in no inappreciable degree. Long famil- 
iarity with the simplicity, the restraint, the severe regard, 
the filial awe that pervade the myths of Greece and Rome, 
or with the newness of life, the naivete and the romance 
of Norse and Old German lore, cannot but graciously tem- 
per our modern estimate of artistic worth. It must fur- 
thermore be borne in mind that the myths of the ancients 
are the earliest literary crystallization of social order and 
religious fear, and are consequently of incalculable value 
to us as recording the incipient history of religious ideals 
and of moral conduct. 

In special, the study of the classic myths, when illus- 
trated by masterpieces of literature and art, should lead to 
the appreciation of concrete artistic productions of both 
these kinds. For, a previous acquaintance with the mater- 
ial of literary tradition heightens the appreciation of each 
allusive passage as it is encountered; it enables the reader 
to sympathize with the mood of the poet, and to breathe 
the atmosphere in which the poet breathes. And to the 
understanding of painting and sculpture, a knowledge of 
the myths is equally indispensable. 

Finally, this study quickens the aesthetic judgment 
and heightens the enjoyment of such works of literature 



SuggestioTis to Teachers. 37 

and art as not treating of mythical or classical subjects 
still possess the characteristics of the classic : the unsophis- 
ticated simplicity, the inevitable and perennial charm, and 
the noble ideality. Most of the poems included in an Eng- 
lish course, whether they deal with classic mythology or 
not, mean little to one who is devoid of the spirit of 
classicism. 

It is essential that the teacher of mythology, no matter 
what text-book or system he uses, or what classical epic he 
proposes to present, should first make himself acquainted 
with the meaning of myth, its origin and elements; the 
difference between myth and fable, between myths ex- 
planatory and myths aesthetic, myths reasonable and myths 
unreasonable, the theories of myth-making as a process of 
deterioration, or as a process of development. He should 
also inform himself concerning the ways in which the lead- 
ing myths have been disseminated, and how the survivors 
have been preserved. Materials for this preparation he 
will find in the Introduction and Chapters I-III of the 
Classic Myths in English Literature (Ginn) more readily, 
perhaps, than elsewhere; but no matter where he obtains 
this information he should in a simple and interesting talk 
pass on the cream of it to the pupils about to begin the 
study of the stories themselves. He will, in that way, 
bring them to a reasonable appreciation of the value of 
mj^ths and their relation to our civilization, and awaken in 
them anticipatory interest in the proposed reading. It is 
a great mistake to plunge students of high school age, with- 
out preliminary orientation and a justification of the study, 
into a world which may otherwise appear to them un- 
reasonable in conception and unrelated in experience. 
Pupils may, if time permits, read these introductory chap- 
ters during a brief review in the senior year — and so obtain 
a systematic outlook upon the subject; but not earlier. If 
a text-book is used, it should be studied for its materials 
and the inspiration that it affords, not word by word for 



38 English in Secondary Schools. 

its style, or as a dictionary or scientific authority; nor 
paragraph by paragraph with a painful committing to 
memory of each myth and each episode in the myth. Dis- 
crimination must be made. Some myths in a text-book, 
and some episodes in a mythological epic, are to be read 
rapidly and in large assignments, sometimes at home with 
reports in class, sometimes in class and at sight — but 
always for the enjoyment. Others are to be studied in 
detail ; but solely when they are of special and vital sig- 
nificance, historically, morally or aesthetically. Emphasis 
should be laid only occasionally and sparingly upon in- 
terpretations of mythical materials. What both teacher 
and student should aim at is the picture — manners, morals, 
ideals, heroic figures, epic events, broad and vivid against 
the canvas of antiquity : that, and the reality of classic 
order, grandeur, and restraint. 

When an epic or a portion of an epic is studied, the 
teacher having seen to it that the class has an adequate 
preliminary training in* general mythology (such for in- 
stance as indicated under English 1, item 4 (&) above) 
should outline rapidly and entertainingly the epic as a 
whole, emphasize its position in the literature of the world, 
and its relation to the world of its own times, before pro- 
ceeding to read it in detail with the class. Excellent sug- 
gestions as to the method of study are offered in the Intro- 
duction to Maxwell & Chubb 's Pope's Homer's Iliad, Bks. 
I, VI, XXII and XXIV (Longmans), and in the Intro- 
duction to the Riverside Edition of the Odyssey: Ulysses 
Among the Phasacians (Houghton, Mifflin). 

For both parts of this study of mythology, maps, 
photographs of illustrative paintings and sculptures (Soule 
Photographic Co., Boston), and cuts of ancient armor, 
clothing, etc., are useful and available. 

The course in mythology, whether in connection with 
the reading of an epic or without it, should be conducted 
in some logical or genealogical order, so that the pupil 



Suggestions to Teachers. 39 

may carry away not a jumble of sporadic recollections but 
a conception of a system of primitive civilization. 

For further statement of the purpose and method of 
this study, see the Introduction to the Classic Myths in 
English Literature (Ginn). For suggestions on teaching, 
see especially pp. xxxv-xxxviii of that introduction. 

The best prose translation of the Iliad is by Lang, Leaf 
& Myers ; of the Odyssey, either that by Butcher and Lang 
or that by Professor G. H. Palmer. The verse translations 
of Homer are Chapman's, Pope's, Cowper's, the Earl of 
Derby's, Bryant's, and William Morris's (The Odyssey). 

§ 27. Poetry (other than the drama) : Lyric, Narrative, 
Descriptive and Reflective. It has been said already (in 
section 25 of this chapter) that the poetry of refined self- 
consciousness and deliberate art, the poetry that requires 
analysis should not be forced down the throats of children. 
The love of poetiy should precede the study of it. Bal- 
lads, poems of national history and sentiment, songs and 
lays that were ever on the lips of our forefathers because 
they sprang from the heart, — in short, the poetry of the 
people, — should be made familiar to our children, because 
it is simple, ingenuous, manly, redolent of national tradi- 
tion and fitted to inculcate national ideals in the rising 
generation. Such poetry is enjoyed and loved; and learned 
because it is a joy to learn it. So a gateway is opened 
to the Courts of Song, where once admitted the novitiate 
turns not back. He presses from cloisters of far-heard 
melody to the chanting choir; the echoing clerestory calls 
to his imagination ; his sense is ravished and his soul re- 
fined with ever new delight. The poetry of the people 
appeals to the communal consciousness and the untutored 
taste. The one it welds, the other it fashions. The poetry 
of art is the poetry of the individual, of personal effort or 
thought, of yearnings rarely all comprehended and less 
than half expressed, of conscious idealization, of social 
themes made spiritual. Sometimes it is the criticism of 



40 English in Secondary Schools. 

life, sometimes of manners ; sometimes the genial mirroring 
of the truth, sometimes the smile that plays upon its face 
— that mocks, but mocking enlightens and diverts. Sug- 
gestive and allusive, and elusive too, its pleasure is not 
bounded by the melody, but is in the counterpoint and 
thorough bass and overtones. 

The poetry of art comforts, heartens, and uplifts; 
illumines life and purifies, creates and recreates. Such 
poetry calls for study that it may be understood, and so 
enjoyed. 

1. The Preparation of the Teacher. The Teacher must 
familiarize himself with the principles of poetry so that 
he may be able to answer the questions that inevitably 
arise when poetry is the subject of discussion, and to give 
the questioner a grasp upon the essentials necessary to 
appreciation and to the formation of an independent judg- 
ment. He should know something about the relation of 
art to nature, and of literature to art; of poetry to liter- 
ature, and of verse and prose to poetry. He should be 
able to explain the creative or imaginative expression in 
poetry proper, and its association with rhetoric and logic. 
He should have a knowledge of rhythm and metre, melody, 
harmony, and structural form in verse, and of the rela- 
tion of all these to the organic principles of speech ; of the 
kinds of poetry, ballad and epic, reflective and descriptive 
recital, lyric, elegy, and ode, drama, pastoral and idyll, 
satire and philosophical poem, and the gesthetic conditions 
precedent to and attendant upon each in turn ; finally of 
the tests and terminology of such criticism as the general 
reader, or the pupil, is likely to consider or apply. This 
information should be retailed to such pupils as are young, 
when occasion offers and discretion dictates. By the more 
advanced student it may be studied, as a whole, some time 
during the course ; and it should be applied continually in 
the appraisement of the poems as they are studied. A 
statement and discussion of the essentials of poetic criti- 



Suggestions to Teachers. 41 

eism and appreciation will be found in the introduction to 
the volume entitled The Principles and Progress of 
English Poetry (Macmillan, 1904). A still fuller treat- 
ment, suitable to the teacher alone, is supplied by Gum- 
mere in his Poetics (Ginn). 

It certainly seems unnecessary to say that the teacher 
should also posses a general and synoptic view of the his- 
tory of his subject. But the history of our literature is 
so frequently studied in a haphazard and piece-meal 
fashion by those who afterward are set to teach its master- 
pieces, that one hardly need apologize for this obvious 
warning. Some one or more of the standard histories 
of the subject should be mastered. Otherwise the blind 
lead the blind. No author or poem can be understood 
out of relation to the environment and the history, politi- 
cal, social and literaiy, preceding and succeeding. 

2. The Purpose of the Study. The aim of the teacher 
in dealing with masterpieces of poetry should be to lead 
his pupils to the noblest kind of emotional enjoyment — the 
appreciation of ideals made concrete in the perfection of 
artistic form ; to develop in his pupils the habit of observ- 
ing closely and keenly the phenomena of natural and 
human existence, with a view to understanding their mean- 
ing as parts of an organized and living whole; to equip 
the mind with the knowledge resulting from the imagina- 
tive treatment of things, that is with the riches of poetry, — 
and to stimulate it to healthy imaginative power; to cul- 
tivate a sense for that which is expressive in nature and 
in literature, and a desire of clothing one's own best 
thought, if possible, in true and beautiful form; and, 
finally, to emphasize the verities of life and the laws of 
conduct. 

3. Method. As in all study of English Classics, the 
lessons assigned should be not arbitraiy and inconse- 
quential fragments of the book but integral parts of the 
poem; and the interest of the pupil should be so aroused 



42 English m Secondary Schools. 

as to insure his reading the whole poem out of school before 
its analysis in the class room is completed. 

{a) Introductory: The study of the poem proper 
should be prefaced by investigation into the life and times 
of the poet, his place and the position of the poem in the 
development of English literature, the social and historical 
features of the times and persons that the poem character- 
izes, and the geography of the scenes that serve as a back- 
ground. These items of information may be supplied in 
three ways: by a study of the history contained in some 
volume that includes both the masterpieces and their his- 
tory ; by informal but carefully prepared talks, in which 
the instructor imparts the results of his reading on the 
subject; and, by gradual and more detailed work, in the 
way of reports prepared by members of the class. 

As general guides may be mentioned : Stopf ord Brooke 's 
English Literature, Saintsbury's Short History, and 
Thomas Arnold's Manual of English Literature. Such 
works as Morley & Tyler's Manual of English Literature, 
Taine's History of English Literature, Morley 's exhaustive 
work, English Writers, Courthope's History of English 
Poetry, Gamett and Gosse's English Literature, Ward's 
English Poets, the History of English Literature (Stud- 
ent's Edition, Macmillan) in four volumes by Brooke, 
Saintsbury, Gosse and Dowden, and the English Men of 
Letters series, should be in the High School library for 
purposes of reference. Some account of the poets them- 
selves will be found in Hale's Longer English Poems, 
Syle's From Milton to Tennyson, and Gayley and Young's 
Principles and Progress of English Poetry, each of which 
contains most, if not all, of the poems ordinarily required 
for entrance to college. The last aims, also, to give a run- 
ning account of literary movements. Chronological out- 
lines and lists of collateral reading will often be of value 
in orienting the teacher; such, for instance, as Emery's 
Notes on English Literature and Ryland's Chronological 



Suggestions to Teachers. 43 

Outlines of English Literature. But it must be remem- 
bered that text-book information about authors or master- 
pieces, if unaccompanied by acquaintance with the works 
themselves, is worth little to the learner. Only those dates 
should be emphasized that are of evident import; they 
should be learned in their sequence and should find a per- 
manent abode in the memory of the pupil. 

(h) General View: Considerable parts of the master- 
piece, or, if possible, the whole masterpiece, having been 
assigned for study at home, pupils should, in recitation, 
produce orally the preliminary information described 
under (a), and outline clearly and concisely the argument 
or narrative of the poem. Each should, then, indicate and 
try to explain the passages that he found difficult to under- 
stand, referring to the class what he cannot explain. 
Finally, each having pointed out the lines and stanzas that 
he most likes, the passages preferred by consensus of 
opinion (of teacher as well as of class) should be marked 
to be committed to memory and recited in class. The in- 
structor should encourage such recitation, even to the 
extent of making it optional with certain other desirable 
work. 

(c) Analysis: Next, taking up the poem in detail, the 
class should examine minutely the obsolete and unusual 
words, phrases, and constructions, and explain the literary 
and historical allusions, noting the poetic chami and sig- 
nificance of each. The pupils should also be required to 
elucidate and classify the more important figures, — poetic, 
rhetorical, etc., — and to comment upon their force, clear- 
ness and suitability. (Princ. and Prog. Eng. Poetry: pp. 

XXXIX-L. 

From images, the transition will be natural to the 
rhythmic expression of the imaginative product. First, 
the rhythm should be discussed, its nature, swift or slow, 
heavy or light, involved or simple, monotonous or varied ; 
second, the tonality of the verse and its appropriateness to 



44 English in Secondary Schools. 

the movement of the thought, emotion, or action; third, 
the style and technical designation of the metre and of the 
stanza, and the fitness of the metrical form. Many lines 
should be scanned at home ; many read in class to illustrate 
irregularities or peculiarities of verse, and to cultivate the 
sense of rhythm. (Princ. and Prog. Eng. Poetry, pp. 

L-XCI. 

It is wise that as a mere matter of option for work out 
of school, or for occasional class-work, pupils be encouraged 
to prepare verses of their own on simple subjects, in the 
metre of the poem under consideration. The feeling of 
rhythmic sequence and the appreciation of verse-forms can 
in no other way, so surely, be developed. 

The pupils familiar with both thought and form of the 
masterpiece may occasionally be required to reproduce in 
their own language the passages in which poetic diction 
most differs from that of prose. This exercise may be con- 
ducted orally or by means of carefully written paraphrases 
of the original. It may, at times, consist of an accurate 
representation of the thought, description, or narrative, 
and, at times, of an expansion of the poet's ideas accord- 
ing to the best judgment and taste of the pupil. But the 
teacher must always remember that there cannot be more 
than one sympathetic expression of a poetic thought; or, 
in other words, that each shade of imaginative thought, 
feeling, and action has its appropriate literary garb. If 
you destroy or vary the garb, you destroy or vary the im- 
pression conveyed. Paraphrasing, therefore, should be 
employed, if at all, in the schools, not as an insult to the 
poet's intelligence, formative skill, and inspiration, but as 
a necessary, though unfortunate, concession to the inexper- 
ience of the pupil, as a means to the removal of that neces- 
sity, and as an exercise in translation, which, when pupils 
study Greek and Latin, has little reason for existence. In 
general, therefore, the advanced pupil should be called 
upon to paraphrase only when he does not grasp the 



Suggestions to Teachers. 45 

thought or appreciate the figure. Rather than alter the 
poet's language, and mutilate the conception, he should 
commit the language to memory, understanding that to 
change the original is a crime against the laws of art and 
of common sense. 

These remarks are by no means a protest against the 
paraphrase as a method of studying grammar, but as a 
method of studying poetry. In the composition class, the 
practice of paraphasing prose and verse is a sure and in- 
valuable aid in enforcing the laws of syntax and in fixing 
the interpretation of words. In the class that studies 
poetry, paraphrase is permissible only as a means of exposi- 
tion, or as a stimulus to invention. 

Parallel with this labor of interpretation goes that of 
criticism, which is always necessary to the appreciation of 
art. There are three attitudes which the pupil should not 
assume in respect of classical poems ; first, that of regarding 
them with apathy ; second, that of reverencing them without 
discrimination ; third, that of attacking them in a super- 
cilious manner, and with a carping or Philistine spirit. 

Patient deliberation and a regard for authority are re- 
quisite to criticism. While the pupil may not be sufficiently 
mature to impugn the verdict by which the poem is de- 
clared a classic, he may still be called upon to consider 
carefully the emotions which the poem has awakened in him, 
and to inquire into the manner of their awakening. He 
should, in other words, study the means by which the poet 
has tried to translate us for a season, from the dust of this 
world to the liberal atmosphere of art. He should ask 
whether the poet has reproduced nature with fidelity, has 
planned probable situations, described reasonable char- 
acters, portrayed true emotions, exercised wisdom, gener- 
osity, and justice in his conception of conduct, chosen the 
fitting imagery and the inevitable rhythm, welded the parts 
into a flawless unity, and transfigured the whole with the 
light that is enduring. 



46 English in Secondary Schools. 

(d) Review: During the study of the poem the pupil 
should keep a note-book, in which are entered, under appro- 
priate headings, passages illustrating qualities of style and 
thought, as well as information gathered concerning the 
social, historical, and literary relations of the poem and the 
poet. This information will be useful in the final character- 
ization of the poem and in composition of essays on special 
features of the work. After several poems have been read, 
the note-book should be used as affording materials for com- 
parative study of subjects, methods, and styles. 

Upon the instructor devolves the task of weaving the 
strands of investigation into something of a web. He may 
well conclude the study of each poem with a brief summary 
of its qualities from Ins point of view, a comparison with 
other poems of the same kind, and a statement of its histori- 
cal and literary importance. 

For further suggestions see Percival Chubb 's Teaching 
of English, Bain's On Teaching English, the Prefaces and 
Notes to Hales' Longer English Poems, and the Principles 
and Progress of English Poetry already mentioned. 

§ 28. Poetry (the Drama) : Shakespeare's Plays in the 
Schools. 

1. Introductory. These plays should be used not as 
text-books but as works of art. The pupil should be led to 
understand and enjoy them. With regard to methods of 
reading, discussion, and composition, the suggestions made 
in § 7 concerning the study of non-dramatic poetry may 
safely be adopted here. The drama should be read, first, in 
natural divisions of considerable length. The inquiry into 
plot, character, and moral sentiment should not be under- 
taken before several acts are in the minds of the pupils. 
The study of language, of figures, and of diction in general 
should be deferred until the second reading. 

It must be borne in mind that the pupil has not the 
knowledge of other Shakespearian plays, or of the drama in 
general, which would warrant his attempting broad eon- 



Suggestions to Teachers. 47 

elusions concerning dramatic principles and canons. The 
teacher, however, should make himself familiar with the 
the best dramas and the best dramatic criticism. He should 
make a study of the dramatic works not only of Shake- 
speare, but of such men as Marlowe, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Sheridan, and Goldsmith. 
[Thayer's Best Elizabethan Plays (Ginn & Co., Boston) 
will be found useful.] He should also read the greater 
Greek dramatists, using Plumptre's translations of 
^schylus and Sopocles, and the translation of Euripides 
(by Woodhull and others) in Morley's Universal Library 
(Routledge, London), in case the originals are not avail- 
able.* Few teachers know the comic as exemplified in plays 
other than the English. An acquaintance with Aristo- 
phanes, Plautus, Terence, and Moliere, even through trans- 
lations, would be productive of salutary results. But what- 
ever information the teacher may acquire and impart he 
should be solicitous lest the pupil adopt, as definite con- 
clusions, opinions based upon unsure principles or insuf- 
ficient data. 

A method of critical study applicable not to school use, 
but to more advanced and independent effort, will be found 
in § 33, TJie Critical Study of Shakespeare. It is hoped 
that it may serve as a stimulus to teachers who desire a 
broader knowledge of the subject. 

2. Special Suggestions. The plan of study suggested 
for non-dramatic poetry will, in many respects, be available 
in the study of Shakespeare ; but in addition the following 
remarks may be useful : 

(a) The pupil must, of course, acquaint himself with 
the date of composition, the materials (traditional and im- 
aginative), and the historical background of the play, as set 
forth in his text-book, and in such books of reference as 
may be at hand. 

* A list of other translations will be found in Classic Myths in 
Engl. Lit., p. 408. 



48 English in Secondary Schools. 

(b) He should be encouraged to read at home not only 
the play in question, but other plays of Shakespeare; to 
commit to memory passages from the plays, and to institute 
comparisons between the plays in respect of plot and char- 
acter. 

(c) In class the exercise should consist largely of read- 
ing and of comment. The pupil should read with simpli- 
city and sympathy; not as striving for effect, but as ex- 
pressing the thought while preserving its rhythmic form. 
The teacher should encourage informal questions, and give 
such explanation as may be necessary concerning the signi- 
ficant in poetic expression, in character, and in action. 

(d) The appearance that the principal characters and 
scenes make or should make upon the stage, and the effect 
that on the stage, and, more particularly, in real life, the 
incidents of the play would have upon the emotions, should 
be kept before the mind of the reader. 

(e) In every play there must be an impulse to action, 
a complication of individual interest, a climax of the 
plot, and a more or less rapid disentanglement of the 
complication leading either to a catastrophe or a happy 
close. Without doubt, the pupil should understand and 
apply these evident principles of construction ; but the 
teacher should beware of emphasizing any elaborate sys- 
tem of dramatic technique as universally applicable or con- 
clusive. The pupil possesses neither dramatic information 
sufficient to judge of such systems by experience, nor philo- 
sophical insight to appreciate them a priori. This remark is, 
however, not, by any means, intended to daunt the teacher 
or to limit his research. [See § 33, B. Dramatic Criticism.] 
His study should enable him, without yielding allegiance 
to any maker of critical systems, to guide his pupils in the 
study of the artistic development of the play, — of the in- 
terests involved, the threads of action, the grouping of 
characters, the successive divisions of the plot, the instants 
of vital importance to the complication, to the hero, and to 
the spectator. 



Suggestions to Teachers. 49 

(/) The pupil should prepare outlines of the scenes 
and acts, showing the significance of each incident and its 
relation to those that precede and follow. 

(g) It is important that the pupil be taught to estimate 
the dramatic evidence under consideration- — to give their 
due weight to actions, speech, and hearsay before coming to 
a decision upon the motives and the personality of any 
character. It is, however, just as important that the pupil 
be not permitted to indulge in platitudes or to wander far 
afield in search of motives that the author could not have 
dreamed of attributing to his dramatis personae. Under 
judicious direction the study of characters should be avail- 
able for exercises in composition. 

{h) With regard to the outcome of the plot, two ques- 
tions only need be put to the pupil : Is it inevitable ? Is it 
artistic? The answer to the foraier will demand review of 
characters and events, discrimination between concrete right 
and concrete wrong, and a decision as to whether justice lay 
in mercy or in retribution. The answer to the latter will 
involve these inquiries : Is the play single in purpose ; 
probable in circumstance ; cunuilative in interest ; direct in 
movement? Does it awaken healthy emotions, and stimu- 
late noble thought? Does it leave us convinced of eternal 
fitness in the outcome? 

(i) The pupil, in estimating the play as a true, rounded, 
and artistic presentation of a sufficient phase of life, must 
be led to distinguish between the selfish and ephemeral sen- 
sation that the experiences of everyday life excite, or that 
the photographic and unidealized drama may awaken, and 
the elevated, impersonal sympathy that a noble life, or the 
transfiguration of life presented by the great drama, is 
capable of inspiring. 

(j) Attention should be paid, at the appropriate time 
(generally during the second reading of the play), to the 
study of words, of sentences, of rhetorical figures, and of 
poetic invention. For suggestions, see §§ 1-5, on Grammar, 



50 English in Secondary Schools. 

Rhetoric, and Composition, and § 27, on Non-Dramatic 
Poetry. 

Texts: Clarendon Press, Hudson's Harvard Edition or 
his School Shakespeare; Rolfe's (Harper's Edition; re- 
vised American Book Co. edition) ; the Arden; the Temple 
School; the Pitt Press. 

Language and Versification: Abbott's Shakespearian 
Grammar (Macmillan) ; Abbott & Seeley's English Les- 
sons for English People, pp. 145-221, Metre (Boston : 1872) ; 
Gayley and Young's Principles and Progress on Verse, 
pp. L-Lxxix; Fleay's Shakespeare Manual; Schmidt's 
Shakespeare Lexicon ; and references in § 13, under Mac- 
beth. 

General References: Lee's Life of Shakespeare; 
Brandes' William Shakespeare; Wendell's Life of Shake- 
speare; Boas' Predecessors of Shakespeare; Dowden's 
Shakespeare Primer; Shakespeare, His Mind and Art 
(Harpers, N. Y.) ; Hudson's Shakespeare's Life, Art, and 
Character, and his Essays on Education, English Studies, 
and Shakespeare (Ginn & Co.) ; Moulton's Shakespeare as 
a Dramatic Artist (Macmillan) ; Ward's English Dramatic 
Literature (3 v. Macmillan) ; Collier's English Dramatic 
Poetry (3 v. London); Taine's English Literature; Gay- 
ley's Representative English Comedies (Macmillan), es- 
pecially for the Historical View of Early Comedy, the 
treatment of Shakespeare's Predecessors, and the Essay 
by Dowden on Shakespeare as a Comic Dramatist ; and see 
§ 33, References on Six Shakespearian Tragedies. 

§ 29. Prose: The Essay. See sections 8, 10, 13 and 15 
of the preceding chapter. 

§ 30. Prose: The Oration and Argument. The chief 
value of the speeches studied under this heading lies, first, 
in their treatment of great and far-reaching questions in the 
light of universal principles ; and, second, in their masterly 
handling of argument. On both these lines they should 
furnish much-needed stimulus and discipline to the young 



Suggestions to Teachers. 51 

American, especially because nearly all of them deal with 
questions which have since been decided in the great tribu- 
nal of history, and because those decisions are now incor- 
porate in the life and institutions of our country. It may 
be remarked that the language of Burke in particular offers 
some difficulty in that it is not quite remote enough from 
our own to make the reader constantly aware of the gap, 
and therefore constantly on the alert to bridge it and make 
sure of the sense ; nor yet near enough to make such effort 
unnecessary. This difficulty, however, is not wholly a dis- 
advantage, since it gives opportunity for the enforcement 
of careful and intelligent reading, and for practice in the 
important art of making the context elucidate doubtful 
points. For further suggestions see Payne's edition of 
Burke's Orations, or the volume entitled Orations and 
Arguments (Allyn and Bacon). 

§ 31. Prose : The Novel. 

1. Purpose. In the study of such a novel as Henry 
Esmond, The Newcomes, or Silas Marner, the objects to 
be kept in view are : 

{a) Training in careful, open-eyed reading. The 
length of the work and the fact that it is a story appeal to 
the pupil's tendency to slight and to skip. But he must 
hnoiv this novel thoroughly. 

(b) Acquaintance with a world of life, of motive, of 
action outside of our own narrow and provincial round. 

(c) Arrest of attention upon matters of greater import 
than the mere ' ' story, ' ' in order that — as in noble tragedy — 
our crude interest and frothy excitement may be "purified 
through pity and fear. ' ' 

(d) A quickening of the ethical sense, and its emancipa- 
tion from bondage to conventionality. 

These points are roughly arranged in an ascending 
series ; the earlier terms are means to the later ones, and 
these last are the more vital — are the real ends of all cul- 
ture. They cannot be directly imparted, but they must not 



52 English in Secondary Schools. 

be neglected. Another way of putting the matter would be 
to say : Let this novel be so treated and handled as to bring 
to these pupils some revelation of the dignity and the last- 
ing joy of such a work of art, and of the vast difference 
there is between finding in it such pleasure and finding ip 
it only pastime for an idle hour. 

2. Method. The following suggestions are offered: 

{a) The class should treat the work as a novel, not as a 
text-book. Pupils should be encouraged to read and finish 
the story at home long before they have completed the study 
of it in class. Consequently the teacher should assign for 
lessons not scraps of the book but natural divisions of the 
story, of considerable length. 

(6) In recitation, the class should be prepared to give 
an outline of the part of the novel assigned for the day, and 
to show its connection with what has preceded; to discuss 
the characters as they are brought upon the scene, showing 
how they affect the reader's conception of other characters 
and of the plot in general ; to follow the development of 
each character as an actual personality, and to estimate the 
influence of circumstances upon character; to w^eigh care- 
fully motive, impulse, conduct, and character of indi- 
viduals, and not only their professions, but their actions and 
the opinions of their fellows in the world of the novel. 

(c) The class should study the novelist in connection 
with the novel; first, his life and character, as found else- 
where ; secondly, his personality, as revealed in this work — 
his purpose in the development of plot and character, his in- 
sight into things, his wisdom in the choice of subjects, his 
accuracy in the portrayal of the subjects chosen, and his 
emotional manner (pathos, sublimity, humor, irony, etc). 

{d) The class should observe throughout the novel the 
sequence of movement and the unity of interests and parts ; 
in selected passages it may study the rhetorical qualities of 
style. 



Suggestions to Teachers. 53 

(e) The creations of the novelist ought to be compared 
with things as they are in life, as they miffht be, or as they 
should he. In other words, the novelist may present a pic- 
ture that is realistic, aesthetic, or idealistic. If his picture 
combines naturally all these characteristics, it is the highest 
art ; if it possesses none of them, it is not worthy to exist. 
(See Princ. and Prog. Eng. Poetry, pp. xxxii-xxxv, civ- 
cvi). 

(/') The pupils nuist understand the difference (if there 
be any) between the domestic, social, political, and religious 
conditions of the story and those that obtain in their own 
environment. 

(g) The recitation should cover oral and written reports, 
rapid questioning, informal discussion, and (in proof of 
assertions made in discussion or report) the reading aloud 
of passages from the novel. 

(/() The written reports or compositions should be pre- 
pared at home, except when the exercise is brief and of 
frequent recurrence, as is usual in paragraph-writing. The 
subjects should always be definite in meaning and scope and 
within the pupil's capability. 

(i) Pupils should be referred by the teacher to parallel 
reading — historical, biographical, imaginative- — and en- 
couraged to do it at home. 

(j) Fnally, the pupils must review the novel as a work 
of art to be enjoyed and estimated in its entirety. They 
and their teacher should remember that the purpose of 
art is not to teach English or anything else, but to edify, — 
by such a presentation of the probable or possible as, ap- 
pealing to the emotions and the imagination, shall interest. 
Indirectly, and only as an after-effect, the verities of art 
may convince. 



54 English in Secondary Schools. 

CHAPTER III. 

Supplementary Reading for Schools. 

§ 32. In response to frequent requests from principals 
and teachers for lists of books which may be profitably 
read by pupils in their leisure hours or be used as a basis 
for oral and written reports, the following is submitted. 
It may be enlarged by the addition of optional requirements 
as stated in section 1, above. It aims merely to be sug- 
gestive : 

General: The series of Ancient Classics for English 
Readers ; the series of Foreign Classics for English Readers ; 
the Temple Classics; Taine's and Brooke's Histories of 
English Literature; Jusserand's Literary History of the 
English People, and the other literary histories mentioned 
in section 27, above. Tyler's, Richardson's and Wendell's 
Histories of American Literature. 

History: Greene's Short History of the English People; 
the Student's Hume; the Student's France; Lacombe's 
Short History of the French People; Macaulay's History of 
England ; Motley 's Dutch Republic ; Prescott 's Conquest of 
Mexico, etc.; Parkman's Histories; Mahaffy's Greek Life 
and Thought; Church's Roman Life in the Days of Cicero 
Keary's Dawn of History; Story of the Nations Series 
Bryce's Holy Roman Empire; Epochs of History Series 
Fiske 's American histories ; Rhodes ' History of the United 
States since 1850 ; The American Statesmen Series. 

Diary, Biography and Travel: The English Men of 
Letters Series; The American Men of Letters Series; Mrs. 
Oliphant's Makers of Florence; Fronde's Life of Cffisar; 
Irving 's Columbus and Abbotsford; Harrison's Cromwell: 
Boswell 's Johnson ; Lockhart 's Scott ; the Autobiography of 
Benjamin Franklin; Letters of John and Abigail Adams 
(Old South Leaflets) ; Selections from Washington's Diary 
and Correspondence; Life of Washington (Irving and 



Supplementary Reading for Schools. 55 

Fiske, Scudder, etc.) ; Thomas Jefferson's Autobiography; 
Irving 's Life of Goldsmith; Trevelyan's Life and Letters 
of Macaulay ; Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte; Southey's 
Life of Nelson ; Plutarch 's Lives. — Two Years Before the 
Mast ; Views Afoot ; Walden ; Story 's Eoba di Roma ; Park- 
man 's Oregon Trail ; Borrow 's Lavengro. 

Romance and Adventure: Malory's Morte Darthur; 
Bulfinch's Age of Chivalry and Legends of Charlemagne: 
the Mabinogion ; the Stories of the Cid and Roland ; all of 
Scott's novels; Kingsley's Westward Ho, Hereward the 
Wake; Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, Last of the Barons, 
Harold, Rienzi; Lever's Charles O'Malley; The Last of the 
Mohicans, and others by Cooper ; Blackmore 's Lorna 
Doone; Stevenson's Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Black 
Arrow, etc.; Mark Tuvalu's Prince and Pauper; Kipling's 
Captains Courageous, Kim ; Doyle 's The White Company ; 
Churchill 's Richard Carvel, The Crisis ; Crawford 's Via 
Crucis; A. S. Hardy's Passe Rose; Black's Judith Shake- 
speare ; Moore 's The Jessamy Bride ; Robinson Crusoe ; 
Gulliver's Travels; Arabian Nights. 

General Fiction: Maria Edgeworth's Parent's As- 
sistant, Popular Tales, etc.; Thackeray's Vanity Fair and 
Pendennis and other Novels; Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, 
A Christmas Carol, Pickwick Papers and other Novels; 
Austen's Pride and Prejudice, etc.; George Eliot's Ro- 
mola and other Novels; Trollope's The Warden; Haw- 
thorne's Marble Faun; Howell's Silas Lapham, Hazard of 
New Fortunes; Stowe's Old Town Folks, Uncle Tom's 
Cabin; Jackson's Ramona; Craik's John Halifax; Smith's 
Colonel Carter of Cartersville ; Ollivant's Bob, Son of 
Battle. 

TJie Short Story and the Descriptive Sketch: Poe's The 
Gold Bug, Fall of the House of Usher ; any of Hawthorne 's : 
Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, The Merry Men; any of 
Stockton's; Barrie 's Window in Thrums ; Maclaren 's Beside 
the Bonnie Brier Bush, etc. ; Davis ' Van Bibber, Gallegher, 



56 English in Secondary Schools. 

etc.; Bunner's Short Sixes; Kipling's Jungle Books, The 
Day's Work, (William the Conqueror, Brushwood Boy, 
Tomb of His Ancestors, etc.) ; Thompson-Seton 's Wild Ani- 
mals I Have Known, Lives of the Hunted; Jack London's 
Call of the Wild; Muir's Adventure With a Dog and a 
Glacier, Animals of the Yosemite, Mountains of California ; 
Page's In Ole Virginia, etc. 

BooJis on Reading: Koopman's Mastery of Books; Har- 
rison's Choice of Books; Bacon's Essay on Studies; Best 
Hundred Books; Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies; Carlyle's On 
the Choice of Books ; Hamerton 's Intellectual Life ; Lub- 
bock 's Pleasures of Life, etc. 

Dictionaries: The Century; Worcester's; Webster's In- 
ternational ; the Imperial ; New English Dictionary. 

Cyclopaedias, etc.: Encyclopaedia Brittannica ; John- 
son's Universal Cyclopaedia; Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy ; Men and Women of the Time ; Men of the Reign ; 
Appleton 's Cyclopaedia of American Biography ; National 
Cyclopaedia of American Biography; W. D. Adams's Dic- 
tionary of English Literature; Chamber's Cyclopaedia of 
English Literature; Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of 
American Literature; Smith's Classical Dictionary; Allge- 
meine Deutsche Biographie : Poole's Index to Periodical 
Literature ; Bartlett 's Familiar Quotations ; Who 's Who 
(in England) ; Who's Who (in America) ; Vapereau's 
Biographie Universelle. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Advanced Study for Teachers. 

§ 33. The Critical Study of Shakespeare. (For teachers' 
classes, and literary clubs.) 

In view of the numerous inquiries made of the writer 
concerning the best methods of studying Shakespeare's 
dramas in teachers' classes and in literary clubs, it has 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 57 

seemed wise to publish here a few suggestions, not by way 
of formulating a method, but by way of presenting to the 
student a cla&sified statement of what may be worthy of at- 
tention. The student is referred also to what has been said 
above, § 28, on Shakespeare's plays in the schools. 

In clubs meeting once a week it is well first to read the 
play aloud by roles assigned to the various members. The 
next two or more sessions may be devoted to the detailed in- 
terpretation of difficult passages in the text. Then will 
follow the reading of papers prepared by members of the 
club, and discussion should accompany these papers. 

In the preparation for papers and discussions the play 
may be considered from the historical, the dramatic, and 
the literary points of view. Historical criticism deals with 
the external conditions, mth the materials and the growth 
of the literary production; dramatic criticism, with its 
characteristic as a type, (here, as a dramatic type: a plot 
for acting) ; literary criticism, with the theoretic, moral, 
and emotive qualities which give the work an abiding 
artistic value. 

A. Historical Criticism. In this division fall the in- 
quiiy into the sources of the play, the determination of 
dates of composition and publication, and the study of 
social and literary background. With regard to Sources, 
such information as the l)est texts and commentaries afford 
(e.g. Furness' Variorum) should be carefully sifted. Note 
should also be made of the degree and the manner in which 
the dramatic plot and its characters diverge from their 
originals. Material may thus be collected for a study of the 
author's creative power. The determination of Dates is, of 
course, the first step toward an estimation of the author's 
literary development; and in studying this development we 
study the history of dramatic art and of national thought. 
For no play of Shakespeare can be examined alone ; it must 
be appreciated in the sequence of his plays, and in relation 
to the works of contemporary and preceding dramatists. 



58 English in Secondary Schools. 

Concerning the Background of the play, two matters de- 
mand consideration : the environment of the dramatis 
personae, and the circumstances of the author. In each 
case, geographic, historical, personal, and social conditions 
must be ascertained. No reasonable work in dramatic or 
literary criticism can be achieved unless the student possess 
a vivid mental picture of the place, the setting, and the 
atmosphere of the dramatic action, and as clear an under- 
standing of the conditions, inherited, adventitious, or ac- 
quired, of the poet. 

Since verification of the text demands advanced critical 
training and first-class libraries, the general reader would 
better trust for his Textual Criticism to the authority oi 
the best editors. 

Bibliography. The most available and trustwoi-fhy 
authorities, beside the school editions mentioned at the end 
of § 28, are the general editions of Richard G-rant White, 
Hudson (Harvard ed.), Clarke, Knight, Malone, Henry 
Imping, Liddell, the Leopold Shakespeare, and the Bankside 
edition. Boas' Shakespeare and his Predecessors, Moul- 
ton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (Chaps. I, II), 
Lee's, Brandes' and Wendell's Lives of Shakespeare, 
Guizot's Shakespeare and his Times, Halliwell-Phillips' 
Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, and his Memoranda, 
Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Furness' Variorum., the 
Historical View and the Critical Essays in Gaylej^'s Rep- 
resentative English Comedies; and Fleay, Abbott, Ward, 
Dowden, and Collier, as mentioned at the end of § 28, will 
be useful. See also Historical Criticism under Macbeth, 
Richard III, Hamlet, etc., in § 34, References on Six 
Shakespearian Tragedies. 

B. DramMic Criticism,. Here should be considered 
the technique of the plot, its histrionic qualities, and 
its stage history. Since it is wise to profit by experience, 
the Stage History should be studied first. Actors have given 
us no insignificant clue to the criticism of plot in their inter- 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 59 

pretations of dramatic characters, their methods of stage- 
setting, and their conduct of scenes. Their practice makes 
the dramatis personae more human and the dramatic situa- 
tions more real. Important works on the traditions of 
the stage are Irving 's Shakespeare, Furness' Variorum, 
Doran's Annals of the Play (2 v. N. Y. : 1880), Button 
Cook's Book of the Play, Genest's English Stage from the 
Restoration to 1830 (10 v. Lond. : 1832), Betterton's His- 
tory of the Stage (Lond. : 1741), Gait's Lives of the Actors 
(2 V. Lond.: 1831), Baker's English Actors (2 v. Lond.: 
1879), and his London Stage (2 v. Lond.: 1889), Fleay's 
Shakespeare, and his Chronicle of the English Drama, 
Mantzius, English Theatre (1903). 

In estimating the Histrionic Qualities of the play — its 
fitness for stage-presentation — attention must be paid, not 
only to the personal "note" of each character, but to the 
grouping of characters; and dramatic means and effects 
must be tested by probability. For though not necessarily 
possible, a plot must be probable : the conception must be 
imaginatively reasonable, the purpose appreciable, the ar- 
tistic assumptions of person, place, and period consistent, 
the premises ordered, the conclusion logical. If such proba- 
bility of means be observed, the emotional effects will be 
both natural and ideal; and on such emotional effects the 
histrionic quality of the play depends. A vivid realization 
of the play as acted, or as it should be acted, assists materi- 
ally in the study of the impulses, the conflicting motives, 
and interests that necessitate the action of the drama, and 
in the investigation of plot-construction : the growth of the 
complication, the knotting of the entanglement, the un- 
raveling of the dramatic strands. On Dramatic Technique 
or Plot-Construction many treatises have been written, some 
by philosophers like Aristotle, some by playwrights like 
Freytag, some by professional critics. While acquainting 
himself with the more important theories, the student 
should beware of adopting one scheme as a key to every 



60 English in Secondary Schools. 

lock. Some elaborate systems are constructed with refer- 
ence to but one or two kinds of drama, and are inapplicable 
to other kinds. Aristotle's analysis of plot, based upon the 
study of the Greek tragic dramatists (Poetics, Butcher's 
translation in Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art), 
is the simplest, and with reference to it all others of import- 
ance have been constructed. He divides the tragedy into 
its natural parts, Complication and Solution. The Compli- 
cation extends from the beginning of the action to the 
Revolution (or Climax) — a reverse of fortune, or the dis- 
covery of a secret, or both. The Solution extends from the 
Revolution to the Catastrophe, or close, of the play. Frey- 
tag (Die Technik des Dramas, Leipzig: 1881) finds in the 
tragedy three important Moments or Crises, and five Stages 
of action or development. The introductory scenes of the 
play constitute the first stage of action. They prepare the 
audience for the first crisis, the Moment of Impulse or Ex- 
citation, in which the purpose of the story, the nature of 
the coming conflict, is made manifest in speech or deed. 
The second stage is one of thickening plot and cumulative 
interest. It is the Complication. It includes an ascending 
series of situations, the last of which conducts the action to 
its Climax. Thus, the Climax of the play is, in a certain 
sense, the conclusion of the Complication, but it is also 
preparatory to the Solution, and is therefore a stage in it- 
self — the third stage of action. It may consist of one 
scene or of several scenes. It conducts the Complication 
through the period of keenest excitement to the second 
crisis of the play. During the Climax one party or indi- 
vidual has triumphed; but the action is not complete, the 
Complication is still unsolved. In the second crisis the ele- 
ment of Solution is introduced. This crisis is therefore 
called the Tragic Moment, and it consists of some misstep 
of the victors or some decisive "push" of the vanquished. 
The way is now prepared for the Solution — ^the fourth stage 
of the action. But since the rapid and hopeless fall of 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 61 

the hero would lack interest, as savoring too much of a 
foregone conclusion, there is generally held out a hope of his 
salvation, if not of his renewed success. This hope is, how- 
ever, blasted in the Moment of Final Suspense, which is the 
third crisis of the play. From that moment to the close of 
the action is the fifth stage of action, the Catastrophe. 

Freytag's analysis of technique does not apply, without 
modification, to comedy, for reasons which will be evident 
to the reader. See Woodbridge's Technique of Comedy. 

Since this outline of Freytag's scheme of analysis was 
prepared, a translation of his Technik des Dramas, by Alex- 
ander MacEwan, has been published. To it the English 
reader is referred; for the scheme given above is but a 
small part of the essay, and by no means the only sug- 
gestive part. The reader may find a somewhat similar 
method of analysis, with copious illustrations, in Henne- 
quin's Art of Play- Writing (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Bos- 
ton: 1890), Chaps. XVII-XXI. See also, for general the- 
ory, Price's Technique of the Drama (Brentano's, N. Y. : 
1892) ; and, for practical and historical considerations, 
Brander Matthews' development of the Drama (Scribner's, 
N. Y.: 1903). 

Moulton, in his Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (Mac- 
millan & Co., N. Y. : 1893), deals cleverly with Mechanical 
Construction and Plot. The latter he discusses under the 
heads of Single Action, Complex Action, Motive Form, and 
Motive Force. For a clear idea of his method of criticism 
(principally inductive), reference should be made to 
Chaps. Ill, V-XI, XIX, XX, and the Appendix (Technical 
Analysis of Plots). Snider 's System of the Shakespearian 
Drama (Tragedies, Comedies, Histories, 3 v. St. Louis) 
develops in a suggestive, but too exclusively a priori, man- 
ner the subject of Threads, Groups, and Movements. The 
work is stronger in ethical than in technical criticism. 
Ransome's Short Studies of Shakespeare's Plots (Mac- 
millan & Co.) may also be consulted. 



62 English in Secondary Schools. 

It will be evident that, in the study of dramatic plot, 
more than analysis of mechanical construction is involved. 
For the plot, by means of action, displays humanity. To 
determine instants of vital importance to the complication 
and solution, to the hero, and to the audience, to appreciate 
the value of rapid or of suspended action, and the his-- 
trionic quality of dramatic effects, the student must pene- 
trate the form of the action. He must inquire into the 
principles involved; must decipher character in its com- 
plexity and its growth; nuist recognize persons as mem- 
bers of dramatic groups, and must unravel the threads of 
interest and action pursued by these charactei-s and groups. 
In other words, he must study plot in its sources. 

Plot is the synthesis of Action ; and Action is in turn 
dependent upon Cliaracter and Impulse. Not upon char- 
acter fashioned by precedent alone. Character is ■ the 
"accent" of the individual as determined by previous con- 
duct. In ordinaiy circumstances, the accent or "note" 
of the individual may be surmised by those who know 
him; it will be the resultant of his individuality and his 
conduct as they have known them. But if circumstances 
were always ordinary, character would never prompt a 
significant action. To a significant action a new influence 
is necessary. This is furnished by an Impulse (born of 
emergency or conflict) which, working in an unprecedented 
manner upon the desires and judgment of the individual, 
determines a motive of action, a step of self-realization. 
This motive, adopted by the individual, is now his Ideal, 
and urged or guided by impulse, passes into deed. So 
from the impact of impulse upon character (as it was) 
an action springs which may confirm, modify, or subvert 
previous principles of conduct. 

Now, it is just such action; such transition of impulse 
by way of conduct into more mature character, that the 
dramatist selects and combines with similar opposing actions 
into a plot. Consequently, not only in its sequence, but in 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 63 

its factors, so far as they contribute directly to the con- 
struction of the story, does action fall within the realm 
of dramatic criticism. It must, however, be remembered 
that Character and Impulse are not here subjects of study 
coordinate with dramatic Action, but subordinate to it. 
The detailed and independent investigation of personality, 
not for dramatic purposes, but for its own sake, the analysis 
of character into its primary impulses, passions, judgments, 
and motives, in their psychological aspect, falls under the 
head of Literary Criticism., in the manner and to the degree 
there set forth. 

C. Literary Criticism. As Dramatic Criticism con- 
siders the technique of the masterpiece as adapted to stage 
presentation, so Literary Criticism considers its character- 
istic as a work of art; the appropriate expression of that 
which has significance not for the stage alone but for hu- 
manity. Three subdivisions of the question call, there- 
fore, for attention : the Ethical, the Psychological, and the 
Ji^sthetic. 

1. Ethical Criticism seeks to discover the vital forces, 
or principles, that manifest themselves in the personalities 
and institutions presented by the play. These forces are 
positive or negative : good or evil, right or wrong, unselfish 
or vulturous, permanent or ephemeral. They underlie 
character and impulse in human experience. They are, 
consequently, manifest in the various characters and 
groups of the drama ; and they are implied in the institu- 
tions of property, of the family, of society, of the church, 
or of the state with which the characters and groups of 
characters may be identified by duty, interest, or the mere 
momentum of habit. The clash of institution with institu- 
tion, or, inside the institution, of interest with interest, 
may array man against man. The clash of institution with 
institution may take place in the heart of the person : it 
may arouse conflicting interests, suggest contradictory 
ideals, and enlist the person against himself. These forces 



64 English in Secondary Schools. 

coining thns into collision, precipitate the action of the 
plot. Ethical Criticism considers the course and outcome 
of this conflict, and passes judgment upon the wisdom and 
the honesty with which the playwright has ordered the 
destiny of the ethical encounter. 

So far these remarks are more particularly appropriate 
to the conditions of tragedy. Since, however, many plays 
do not, like Julius Caesar and Macbeth, present a duel 
a I'outrance between institutions, individuals, or interests, 
it will be wise for the student to consider, here, the various 
subdivisions of which the drama is capable. 

Subdivisions of the Drama: The broadest division of 
the drama is into Normal and Abnormal. The Normal 
Drama treats of life as embodying positive principles and 
active forces ; in short, as realizing a purpose ; the Abnor- 
mal Drama looks on life as unprincipled, unregulated, or 
purposeless. The former subdivides itself into the Drama 
of Tragic and the Drama of Poetic Jiistice. 

Tragic justice recognizes nothing but uncompromising 
Ideas. They are the inspiration of character and the birth 
of impulse ; they, in the emergency, compel to action ; they 
pass as right and wrong into conduct ; the.y precipitate the 
conflict of heroes, and they persevere till by death, physical 
or moral, the exponent of the false idea is quelled. Death, 
sometimes, too, befalls the protagonist of the right, but 
defeat does not befall the right for which he has done bat- 
tle. Such is the justice that rules the realm of Tragedy. In 
such a realm Macbeth moves, and Richard III, and Corio- 
lanus. 

Poetic justice, on the other hand, while still it recognizes 
ideas as motive powers of life, does not regard them as un- 
compromising. It adjusts idea to idea, idea to situation, or 
situation to situation. In any case the forces in conflict are 
not irreconcilable ; in everj^ case the individuals impelled 
by ideas are mercifully dealt with. To the good falls good, 
to the evil, evil; but the punishment is tempered by mercy. 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 65 

On the stage of poetic justice may be found the Serious 
Play, the Romantic Play, the Play of Caprice. In the 
Serious Play, such as the Merchant of Venice, the ideas ani- 
mating the central characters are still vital, and the interest 
of the spectator is enlisted fully as much for the success of 
this or that idea or principle, as for the fortune of the in- 
dividual identified therewith. But though the alarum is 
sounded, though parties are ranged for conflict, and the 
outcome should be fatal, — though, even, injustice or in- 
humanity seem to triumph, — uncompromising individuals 
are thwarted of their purposes, disarmed in the nick of 
time: the catastrophe, in short, is averted by mediation. 
Right triumphs, wrong is rebuked; the virtuous are re- 
warded, the vicious punished and set in the way of repent- 
ance. In the Romantic Play, serious ideas still prevail, but 
it is no longer for an idea or principle, but for the fortune 
of a hero or heroine, that interest is claimed. This is a 
"smooth tale, generally of love." It may avail itself of a 
villain, but he is artfully and opportunely eliminated; and 
the deserving lovers reap the fruition of their patience. 
Such a play is the Tempest. In the Play of Caprice, ideas 
or principles may exist, but they consort with whims, and 
they sometimes become whimsical themselves. The Play of 
Caprice is both humorous and witty; its truest and most 
genial humor is displayed in the comedy of character; its 
most elementary wit in the comedy of situatio7i; a less gen- 
ial humor and a more elegant wit are combined in the 
comedy of manners. Of course, there are characters worthy 
of remark in the comedy of manners, and there are man- 
ners worthy of consideration in the comedy of situation; 
but each sort is here designated by the element that is in the 
preponderance. As You Like It is a comedy of character ; 
The School for Scandal, of manners; The Comedy of Er- 
rors^ of situation. 

Of the Abnormal Drama little need here be said. It is 
negative in thought, morbid in feeling, or chaotic in action. 



66 English in Secondary Schools. 

It occupies the realm of perversion, exaggeration, and non- 
sense : a realm in which the aims of life are parodied, the 
emotions distorted, or the relations of things ignored. Its 
classes are, accordingly, the Burlesque, the Melodrama, and 
the Farce. The Burlesque may be satirical or sensational. 
In either case it works by negative means; but, in the 
former, it has a serious purpose; in the latter, it would 
merely provoke animal laughter. The satirical burlesque 
is the only excusable kind of abnormal drama. For even 
though its didactic aim overpass the bound of art, still it 
has a value. By inflating the trivial or exhausting the pre- 
tentious it ridicules and sometimes remedies abuses, liter- 
ary, social, and political. Such satirical dramas are Beau- 
mont & Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, Middle- 
ton's Game of Chess, Buckingham's Rehearsal, and Sheri- 
dan's Critic. But in Shakespeare we find no satirical 
drama — merely an occasional trace of the burlesque in cha?-- 
aeter. 

The other kinds of the abnormal drama are beneath con- 
sideration. In so far as they lack idea, form, or perspective, 
they may be called negative. The sensational burlesque in- 
dulges in purposeless and inartistic caricature. The Melo- 
drama may intend to inculcate moral principles, but rely- 
ing, as it does, upon exaggerated situations, irrational 
pathos, and vacant sensations, it is distorted in form and 
ephemeral in result. The Farce (not the short comedy, 
which may be rational and artistic) is stuffed with spora- 
dic situations, improbable whims, and inconsistent compli- 
cations. The abnormal, or negative, drama is the reductio 
ad absurdum of life. 

For Ethical Criticism of Shakespeare's dramas, see 
Coleridge, Schlegel, Ulrici, Gervinus, Snider, Moulton 
(Moral System of Shakespeare), and others, as indicated 
in § 34, References on Six Shakespearian Tragedies. 

2. Psychological Criticism considers the individuals 
in whom these ethical forces are manifest. That is to say, 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 67 

it considers ethical forces not in the abstract, but in the 
concrete, after they have passed through human impulse 
and desire into motive or ideal, conduct and character. Tt 
is the investigation of human pereonality as the resultant 
of a universal purpose and an individual will. It has, 
therefore, a double outlook : on the one hand, tOAvard the 
ethical purpose or principle of action ; on the other, tOAvard 
the character in and after action. It judges of the action 
in the light of the principle, and of the character in the 
light of the action. Personality it studies as organic ; char- 
acter as dynamic. It determines personality in the out- 
come ; it investigates character in the complexity of its 
factors, of its growth, and of its relation to circumstances, 
personal and impersonal. 

In analysis of motive and character-study the Ger- 
mans have excelled — Gervinus (Shakespeare Commen- 
taries), Schlegel (Dramatic Literature), and Ulrici 
(Shakespeare's Dramatic Art), in particular. Some of 
the best English critics of the Shakespearian characters 
are Coleridge (Lectures on Shakespeare and other Dram- 
atists) ; Dowden (Shakespeare, His Mind and Art), Har- 
pers, N. Y. ; Hudson's Shakespeare's Life, Art and Char- 
acter. 2 v., Boston; Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of 
Shakespeare's Women; Hazlitt's Characters of Shakes- 
peare's Plays. See also § 34. 

3. ^-Esthetic Criticism deals with the form in which 
the dramatist conveys his thought, and with the effect 
produced thereby upon the imagination and the emotions of 
the reader or spectator. It considers the sEsthetic values 
of the work of art — the tragic and the comic, the pathetic, 
sublime and beautiful ; and the elements that go to produce 
these results in diverse situations, characters, and inci- 
dents. It considers the diction, the imagery, the prose, 
and the verse of the masterpiece, and the suitableness of 
each to the purpose of the author. It considers the unity 
of the drama, and of each part as a necessary component. 



68 English in Secondary Schools. 

It distinguishes between the selfish sensation excited by 
the experiences of everyday life, or awakened by the photo- 
graphic and unidealized drama, and the elevated sympathy 
inspired by a noble transfiguration of life. It asks whether 
the drama is a true, rounded and artistic presentation of 
a sufficient phase of human action. 

On the Tragic and the Comic, see Professor C. C. Ever- 
ett's Poetry, Comedy, and Duty (Boston: 1888) ; on these 
and other Esthetic values, see Schopenhauer's World as 
Will and as Idea (transl. Seth and Haldane, 3 v. Lond. : 
1883), Kedney's Hegel's Esthetics, Gayley's Historical 
View in Representative English Comedies, sections 2, 8 and 
14 (Macmillan, 1903), his Principles of Poetry, section 13 
(Princ. and Prog. Eng. Poetry: Macmillan, 1904), and 
other references in Gayley & Scott's Guide to the Litera- 
ture of .Esthetics (Berkeley: 1890). On .-Esthetic Criti- 
cism, see § 34, under Literary Criticism, and on Versifica- 
tion, see § 34, Macbeth, under Literary Criticism. 



§34. References on six Shakespearian Tragedies. 

I. 
MACBETH. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources. — Holinshed's Chronicle; Clarendon 
Press Series (Clark and Wright), Macbeth. Editions of 
R. G. White, Knight, and Clarke. Furness, Variorum, 
2:352-380. Rolfe, Macbeth, 13-15. Hudson, Shakespeare, 
17:5-10. Fleay, Anglia, 7:128 (Davenant's Macbeth). 
Snider, Shakespearian Drama, 1 :210-219. Gervinus, 
Shakespeare Commentaries, 583. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's 
Library, vol. 2. Ward, Engl. Dram. Lit., vol. 2. Life of 
Shakespeare by Sidney Lee, Brandes or Wendell. 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 69 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 

Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stacje Ilistorij. — Freytag, 
Die Technik des Dramas. Moiilton (see below). Snider 
(see below). Ransome, Shakespeare's Plots. The Henry 
Irving' ed. of S., vol. 5. For Stage History, see authori- 
ties under Otliello, etc. 

C. Literary Criticism. 

Ethical, Psyclwlogical, JEsthetic. — Hazlitt, Characters 
of Shakespeare's Plays, 17. Mrs. Jameson, Characteristics 
of Women {American edition). 443. Fnrness, Macbeth. 
George Fletcher, Studies of Shakespeare, 109. Joseph 
Hnnter, New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and "Writ- 
ings of Shakespeare, 2:160. Bucknill, The Mad Folk of 
Shakespeare, 7, 10, 44. Gervinus (translated by Mr. 
Furness), Shakespeare Commentaries. Edward Dowden, 
Shakespeare; a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, 244. 
Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, 237. Snider, Shakes- 
pearian Drama, 219-285. Moulton, Shakespeare as a 
Dramatic Artist, 125-168 ; and his Moral System of Shake- 
speare. DeQuincey, Miscellaneous Essays (The Knocking 
at the Gate in Macbeth). Gayley, Sha,kespcariana, Jan. 
1884 (Macbeth). John Weiss, Wit and Humor of Shake- 
speare, 363-395; also (Lady Macbeth), 400-428. Lamb, 
Works. 4:78. Schlegel, Dramatic Literature. ITlrici, 
Shakespeare's Dramatic Art; Elze's Notes on Elizabethan 
Dramatists. Corson, Introduction to Shakespeare (The 
Witch Agency in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth 's Relations 
to Macbeth). Chambers' The Metre of Macbeth (1903). 
A. C. Bradley, Lectures on Shakesp. Tragedy (1904). 

Macmillan's Magazine, Feb. 1868 (Motive in Macbeth). 
Nineteenth Century, 1877 (The Third Murderer in Mac- 
beth). The Century, Nov., 1881. 

On Shakespeare's Versification and Language, in this 
and in other plays, see J. B. Mayor, On English Metre^; 



70 English in Secondary ScJiools. 

Schipper, Enolische Metrik ; F. G. Fleay, Shakespeare 
Manual ; E. A. Abbott, A Shakespeare Grammar ; C. L. 
Craik, The English of Shakespeare ; W. S. Walker, Shake- 
speare 's Versification; Guest's History of English Rhythms 
(2 vols. Ed. by Skeat. Lond., 1882). See also. General 
Note, after references on Coriolanus, below. 

II. 
KING RICHARD III. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources.— 'Editions : Clarendon Press, 
White, Furness, Rolfe, Hudson, Clarke, etc. Sir Thomas 
More's Life of Richard III; Holinshed's Chronicle. Haz- 
litt, Shakespeare's Library, 5:43-220. Gervinus, 259- 
263. Tegg, Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, 49-52. 
Ward, Eng. Dr. Lit., vol. 2. Guizot, Shakespeare and His 
Time, 336. Hudson, Shakespeare, His Life, Art, and 
Characters, 2:134-143. Lloyd, Essays, 285-292. Life by 
Lee, Brandes, Wendell. Predeces.sors. by F. Boas. 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 

Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stage History. — Lamb's 
Works, 4:92-93. (On the Tragedies of S.). Henry Irving 
ed., 3:10-11, and notes. Moulton, 105-124. Snider (see 
below). Freytag, Die Technik, 103, 105. Dutton Cook, 
Nights at the Play, 31-36, 38, 326-328. Murdock, The 
Stage, 188, 215, 315, 411. Archer, About the Theatre, 110, 
244, 253. Doran (ed. R. H. Stoddard), Annals of the 
Stage, 2 :390. On Stage History, see other authorities 
cited under Othello, etc. 

C. Literary Criticism. 
Ethical, Psychological, JEsthetic. — Hudson {Harvard 
ed.), 137-141. Ulrici, Dramatic Art, 2:274. Moulton, S. 
as a Dramatic Artist, 90-105; and his Moral System of 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 71 

Shakespeare. Gervinus, S. Commentaries, 263-278. Snider. 
Shakespearian Drama, Histories, 456-484. Dowden, S. 
Mind and Art, 180-193. Guizot, Shakespeare and His 
Times, 334-339. Coleridge, Works, 4:133 (S. and other 
Dramatists). Whitman, Critic, 2:145 ("What Lurks Be- 
hind Historic Plays"). Hudson, 2:143-169 (see above). 
Henry Irving ed., 3 :11-14. Lloyd, Essays, 292-299. Haz- 
litt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 160-167. Schlegel, 
Dramatic Literature, 435-438. Mrs. Jameson, Char- 
acteristics of Women, 396-407. 

Hebbel, Werke, 11:165. Herrig's Archiv, 65. 383. 
Kreyssig, Vorlesungen iiber S., 1 :326-349. 

III. 

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, 
Prince of Denmark. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources. — Furness, The Variorum Shake- 
speare, 1: notes; 2:142. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, 
2:5, 87. Temple and Arden eds. Hudson {Harvard ed.), 
13, 14:139. Ward, English Dramatic Lit., vol. 2. White 
(E. G.), Shakespeare's Works, 11:5; additions. Elze, 
Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists, 224-255; and his Wil- 
liam Shakespeare (Trans. Schmitz), 352. Snider, Shake- 
spearian Drama (Trag.), 343. Clarke, Aldis Wright, and 
other editions. Lee, Brandes, Wendell, Boas, as under 
Eichard III. 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 

Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stage History. — Halliwell- 
Phillips, Memoranda on Hamlet. Phelps (H. P.), Stage 
History of Hamlet. Freytag, Die Technik, 101-120. 
Snider, Tragedies. Dutton Cook, Nights at the Play, 
260-263, 373, 454; Book of the Play, 1 (Ghosts on the 
Stage). Lamb, Works, 4:78, Tragedies of Shakespeare. 



72 English in Secondary Schools. 

Russell, Representative Actors, 14, 16, 310, 326. Murdock, 
The Stage, 36, 67, 115, 123, 305-7, 313, etc. G. H. Lewes, 
Actors and the Art of Acting. Baker, English Actors. 
Collier, English Dram. Poetry, 1 :272 ; 3 :273. Doran, An- 
nals of the Stage. Hutton, Plays and Players. Henry 
Irving ed., 8. A. C. Bradley, Shakesp. Tragedy. Monlton, 
Shakesp. as Dram. Artist. 

C. Literary Criticism. 

Ethical, Psychological, JEstlietic. — Bucknill, Mad Folk 
of Shakespeare. Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, 
1:145. Coleridge (H), Essays, 1:151. Conolly (Dr. J.), 
A Study of Hamlet. Corson, Introduction to Shakespeare, 
194. Dowden, Shakespeare, His Mind and Art, 111-143. 
Fleay, Neglected Facts on Hamlet {Eng. Stud.), 7:87. 
Furness, Variorum Shakespeare, 2:143. Gervinus, Shakes- 
peare Commentaries, 548. Guizot, Shakespeare and His 
Times, 174. Halliwell-Phillips, Mem. on the Tragedy of 
Hamlet, 10. Hazlitt, Elizabethan Literature, 73. Hud- 
son, Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare, 1 :243. 
Ingleby, The Man and the Book, Pt. 1 :120. Lowell, Among 
My Books (Shakespeare Once More), 209. Maudsley, 
Body and Mind, 145-195. Snider, The Shakespearian 
Drama (Tragedies), 286. Schlegel, Dramatic Literature 
(Lecture XXV), 404. Strachey (Sir E.), Shakespeare's 
Hamlet. Ulrici, Dramatic Art, 1 :279. Weiss, Wit, 
Humor, and Shakespeare, 153-339. Lady Martin, Some 
of Shakespeare's Female Characters. Zim, A Throw for a 
Throne. William Preston Johnston, The Prototype of 
Hamlet (The Belford Co., N. Y.). Moulton, Moral System. 

Friesen (H. von). Brief e iiber Shakespeare's Hamlet. 
Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, bk. 4, ch. 3 ; bk. 5, ch. 4. Kreys- 
sig, Vorlesungen iiber Shakespeare, 2:42. Werner (H. 
A.), Jahrb. der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. 5. 
See same Jahrb., 2 :16 :36. Werder, Vorlesungen iiber 
Hamlet, Preuss Jahrb., 32:531, 664; 33, 3-8. 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 73 

In Ilerrig's Arckiv, the following: 60:267 (Deetz). 
31:93 (Eckhardt). 37:255, Die Ideale nnd das Leben 
(Humbert). 4:328, Monolog (Huser). 27:269, Hamlet, 
eine Schicfealstragodie (Jung). 59:237, Tragodie der 
Pessimismus (Rundschau). 6:1; 8:65 (Sievers). 3:1, 
(Zeil). 

Periodical Literature. — • Atlantic Monthly, 49 :388. 
Blackwood, 37:236; 2:504; 24:585; 46:449. Boston Re- 
view, 6:519. Fraser, 14:1; 32:350. Jour. Spec. Phil., 
7:71. North Amer. Review, 106:629. Nation, 10:170. 
Nineteenth Century, 1 :513. Macmillan 's Magazine, 34 :35] . 
Pop. Science Monthly, 17:60. Saturday Review, 59:246. 
Westminster, 83 :65. Lippincott, April, 1890. 

IV. 

THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, 
The Moor of Venice. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources. — F. G. Fleay, Shakesp. Manual, 
47. Guizot, Shakespeare and His Times, 217-227. Haz- 
]itt, Shakespeare's Library, 2:282-308. Hudson {Harvard 
ed.), Othello, 157-160. Temple, Arden and other eds. 
Furness Yariorum Othello 339-389. Simrock, Quellen des 
Shakespeare, 3:181. Klein, Geschichte des Dramas, 2:384. 
Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 
1:213; 2:302-3. A. W. Ward, English Dram. Lit., vol. 2. 
Editions of White, Clarke, Aldis Wright, Knight, Malone. 
Rolfe. Irving ed.. 6 :3-8. The original and translation of 
Cinthio's Hecatommithi, Deca Terza, Nov. 7. See Hazlitt 
and Furness, Lee, Brandes, Wendell. 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 

Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stage History. — Furness, Va- 
riorum, 358-372 (Duration of the Action). John Wilson, 
Blackw. Maga., Nov., 1849 ; April and May, 1850 (Reprint in 



74 English in Secondary Schools. 

Trans. New S. Society, 1875-76, 1877-79). Freytag, Die 
Technik, 105, 112. Snider, Tragedies, 79-125. Lamb, Trag- 
edies of S., 96-7. Leigh Hunt, Critical Essays on the Per- 
formers of the London Theatres, 40, 183. Lewes (G. H.), 
Actors and Acting, 266-276 (First Impressions of Salvini). 
Fitzgerald (Percy), New History of the English Stage 
(2 v.), 1:61. Russell, Repres. Actors, 14. Button Cook, 
Nights at the Play, 306-307, 442, 445-456, 461. Mowbray 
Morris, Essays in Theatrical Criticism, 91-118. Archer, 
About the Theatre, 239, 244, 253, 330. Also under Better- 
ton, Garrich, Kenible, Edmund Kean, etc., in Doran, Baker, 
Gait — Lives of the Players. Henry Irving ed., 6 :8-13. 
Moulton, Sh. as Dram. Art. 

C. Literary Criticism. 

Ethical, Psycliological, yEsthetic. — Coleridge, Works 
(Shakespeare and Other Dramatists), 4:177-185. Dow- 
den, Shakespeare, His Mind and Art, 230-244. Gervinus, 
Shakespeare Commentaries, 505-547. Hudson, Shake- 
speare's Life, Art, and Character, 2:423-460. Mrs. Jame- 
son, Characteristics of Women, 240-253. Lloyd, Essays, 
453-466. Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age, 86-146. Schle- 
gel. Dramatic Literature, 401-404. Snider, Shakespearian 
Drama (Tragedies), 79-124. Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dra- 
matic Art, 1:398-432. Hazlitt, Characters of S. Plays, 
30-44. Moulton, Dram. Art., and Moral System. A. C. 
Bradley, Shakesp. Tragedy. 

Herrig's Archiv., 55; 297; 5:234, 9:77, 137, 256. Kreys- 
sig, Vorlesungen liber S., 2 :78-101. Living Age, 149 :206. 
Temple Bar, 48 :506. Century, 23 :117. 

V. 

KING LEAR. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources. — Holinshed's Chronicle. Furness, 

Variorum, 5:353-408. White, Shakespeare's Works, 11: 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 75 

201-202. Eolfe, King Lear, Temple Ed. Hudson, Shake- 
speare's Life, Art, and Character, 2:320. Hazlitt, Shake- 
speare's Library, 2:313—353, and 6:307-387. Gervinus, 
Shakespeare Commentaries, 611-13. Ward, English Dram- 
atic Lit., vol. 2. Guizot, Shakespeare and His Times, 
185-8. Doran, Annals of the Stage (Tate's Improvement), 
1 :151. Elze, William Shakespeare, 353. Henry Irving 
ed., 6 :321-4. Lee, Brandes, Wendell. 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 
Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stage History.- — Moulton, 
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 203-25. Snider, Shake- 
spearian Drama (Tragedies), 126-209. Ransome, Short 
Studies of Shakespeare's Plots, 118-61. Dutton Cook. 
Nights at the Play (Booth), 449. Baker, English Actors, 
1:159 (Garrick) ; 2:159 (Edmund Kean). Murdock, The 
Stage (Kean), 131, (Forest) 296, (Adams) 357. Dutton 
Cook, A Book of the Play (Storm in Lear), 2:86. Doran, 
Annals of the Stage (Garrick and Barry), 1:409. Frey- 
tag. Die Teehnik, 111. Henry Irving ed., 6 :325-32. 

C. Literary Criticism. 
Ethical, Psychological, Esthetic. — Dowden, Shake- 
speare, His Mind and Art, 257-75. Furness, Variorum, 
5 :412-78. Gervinus, Shakespeare Commentaries, 613-44. 
Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (Elizabethan 
Literature), 108-26. Hudson, Shakespeare's Life, Art, and 
Characters, 2 :324-58. Lamb, Works, 4 :94. Lloyd. Shake- 
spearian Essays, 437-52. Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dra- 
matic Artist, and his Moral System. Snider, Shakespearian 
Drama (Tragedies), (as above). Schlegel, Dram. Litera- 
ture, 411. Coleridge, Shakespeare and Other Dramatists, 
133-43. Coning-ton, Miscellaneous Writings, 1:74-104. 
Mrs. Jameson, Characteristics of Women, 280. Kreyssig, 
Vorlesungen liber Shakespeare, 2:102-30. Elimelin, 
Shakespeare Studien, 71-77. Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dra- 



76 English in Secondary ScJiools. 

matic Art, 1:433-59. White, Atlantic, Lear, 46:111. Sal- 
vini, Ce7iturij, Impressions of Shakespeare's Lear. 27:363. 
Hales, Fortnicihtly Eevieiv, Lear, 23 :83. Wise, Shakespeare 
and His Birthplace, 124, 127. Elze, William Shakespeare, 
402, 471. Rolfe, King Lear. A. C. Bradley, Shakesp. 
Tragedy. 

VL 
CORIOLANUS. 

A. Historical Criticism. 

Date, Text, Sources. — Hudson, Life, Art, and Character, 
2:460-80. Hazlitt, Shakespeare Library, 257-311. Tegg. 
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, 56. Lloyd, Shake- 
speare Essays, 333-4. Gervinus, 746. Dowden, Shake- 
speare's Mind and Art, 276-280. Ward, English Dramatic 
Literature, vol. 2. Sir Thomas North, Lives of the 
Noble Grecians and Romans, compared together by that 
learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarch of Chae- 
ronea (Coriolanus). Ulrici, Shakesp. Dramatic Art, 1:226; 
2:410. Snider (Histories), 98-106. Editions of White. 
Clarendon Press, Hudson, Knight, ptc. Henry Irving ed., 
6:219-20. Temple Ed. Lee, Brandes, Wendell. 

B. Dramatic Criticism. 

Plot, Histrionic Qualities, Stage History. — Freytag, 117. 
Ransome, Short Studies of Shakespeare's Plots, 239-268. 
Snider (Histories), 107. Archer, About the Theatre, 274. 
Fleay, Manual, 52. On Stage History, see Henry Irving 
ed., 6:220-226, and under Coriolanus, Tate, John Dennis, 
James TJiomson, J. P. Kemhle, Mrs. Siddons, Kean, Ma- 
cready, Vandenhoff, in Baker's English Actors, Murdoek's 
Stage, Collier's Dramatic Poetry, Dutton Cook's Book of 
the Play, Doran's Annals of the Stage, Gait's Lives of tfie 
Players. Introductions to the Rolfe, Hudson, Clarendon 
Press, White, Knight, Temple, Arden, and other editions. 



Advanced Study for Teachers. 77 

C. Literary Criticism. 

Ethical, Psychological, JEsthetic. — Hudson, Life, Art, 
etc., 2 :408-88. Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, 4 :100- 
101. Snider (Histories), 107-143. Gervinus, 746-68. 
Lloyd, Shakespeare's Essays, 334^48. Schlegel, Dramatic 
Literature, 414. Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, 2: 
188-94. Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 49-58. 
Stapfer, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, c. 23-24. 
Dowden, Mind and Art, 317-36. Mrs. Jameson, Char. S. 
AVomen, 345-57. Irving ed., 6 :266-29. Kreyssig, Vorlesun- 
gen, 1 :464-95. 

General Note. 

For a fairly complete bibliography of Shakespearian 
literature, see the Appendix to Max Koch's valuable manual 
"Shakespeare" of the Cotta-'sche Bibliothek der Welt- 
Litteratur, published in Stuttgart, and to be had of the J. 
G. Cotta-'sche Buchhandlung (price, about 50 cents). 

For Historical Criticism, Koch furnishes, pp. 307-10, 
classified lists of the old quartos, and of the general edi- 
tions (besides those cited above), N. Rowe's (1709; 1864), 
Theobald's (1772), Sir T. Hanmer's (1744), Dr. Johnson's 
(1765), Capell's (1767-8), Johnson & Steevens' (1773), 
revised, J. Reed (1813), Edm. Malone's (1790). K. F. C. 
Wagner's (1799), J. Boswell's (1821), J. P. Collier's 
(1842-4), The Works, and (1853) the Plays. Dyce's 
(1874-6), the Leopold ed. (1877). Lists of Translations 
of S. and of the doubtful plays are given, pp. 312-14. Bio- 
graphical material, pp. 316-20. The Sources of the Plays, 
p. 321 ; note especially Simrock's Die Quellen der S., Bonn: 
1872; J. P. Collier's Shakespeare's Library, 2 v., Lond. : 
1843; G. Steevens' Six old plays on which S. founded his 
own plays, Lond. : 1779. 

For Dramatic Criticism, see Koch, pp. 321-24. Notice 
Delius' Die Biihnenweisungen in den alten Shaksp. — Aus- 
gaben (1879), and the other Shakespearian studies by De- 



78 English in Secondary Schools. 

lius; H. Ulrici Ueber Shakespeare's Fehler und Mangel 
(1868) ; Meissner's Ueber die innere Einheit in Shake- 
speare's Stiicken. 

For Literary Criticism in general, see, in addition to 
references given above, Lessing's Letters concerning Re- 
cent Literature, and his Dramatic Notes ; Goethe 's Rede 
Zum "Shakespears-Tag" (Bd. 2 des 'Mungen Goethe," 
Leipz. : 1875), his remarks in Wilhelni Meister, and the 
three articles collected under the title, Shakesp. und kein 
Ende; A. W. von Schlegel's Etwas von W. Shakespeare 
bei Gelegenheit Wilhelm Meisters (1796) ; L. Tieck's Let- 
ters on Shakespeare, etc., in Kritische Schriften (Leipz.: 
1848); Hugo's William Shakespeare (Paris: 1864); Pa- 
pers of the Shakesp. Society, 38 v. (Lond. : 1841-52) ; Pub- 
lications of the New Shakespeare Society (Furnival ed., 
1874-). Heller's Shakespeare und die Philosophic (Auf- 
satzen iiber S.) ; Hertzberg's Metrisches, Grammatisches, 
Chronologisches zu Shakespeare's Dramen (1878) ; Hilgers' 
Der dram. Vers Shakespeare's (Aachen 1868-9) ; Delius' 
Die Prosa in Shakespeare's Dramen (1870). Many of 
these German articles will be found in the Jahrbuch d. 
deutschen Shakespeare — Gesellschaft (Berlin u. Weimar, 
1865-84). 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

^ iiiyitiiiiiiiiii iiiii^^^ 



019 747 573 # 



^^Sr/ 



b-ib 



litt!^)'.,°'; CONGRESS 



019 747 573 



